‘Lazy and talentless, that’s how I feel when I look at the generations of mothers who came before me,’ confesses Bibi in her column. ‘The baby boomers, for example. How did they do that?! Were they never too tired after a day’s work, running and flying to decide what to put on the table for the evening? They couldn’t log in to a delivery app and eat sushi with the whole family less than an hour later.’
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For example, Bibi’s mother used to roam the shelves of the supermarket with her ‘looking for the right Mora chicken fingers and then go home with all the offspring on a bicycle and dive into the kitchen’. The life that Bibi aspires to, but has not yet fully mastered herself.
Bibi recently shared her guilt about motherhood – mothers who don’t fit the picture perfect – with her own mother. That caused a revelation. “Mom, you did it all right back in the day. How did you do that? I also want to be that kind of mother who knows what she’s doing every day.’ My mother came up with an unexpected answer: “I used to order something too, you know.”
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Now that the heavy weight of the Home Delivery complex has partly fallen off Bibi’s shoulders, she feels less guilty if she doesn’t serve Teddy a freshly cooked meal. The potatoes can sometimes burn. ‘I now walk into the kitchen guilt-free more often, look for a tasty and especially easy recipe and enjoy all the conveniences that we mothers have in 2021. It also makes me aware again that thinking all day about what could be better as a mother, or worse, what we fall short of, is deadly exhausting.’
The entire column by Bibi Breijman can be read in Flair. The latest edition will be in stores tomorrow.
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