Smells of soy sauce, scallions and red bean soup drift from the kitchen whenever I visit. The hum of the washing machine lulls me to sleep. In season, there are roses in the garden, and vases hold flowers arranged like those in a painting. My aunt enjoys keeping house, although she’s wealthy enough to hire someone to do it.
I’m a failure at housework. I’ve chosen to be inept and unlearn what my aunt has spent so much time perfecting. At 13, I avoided domestic chores as my contribution to the women’s movement. Up to now, I’ve thought there were more important things to do.
I am a member of a generation that is very concerned with saving time but often unaware of why we’re doing it. Like many, I’m nervous and jittery without a wristwatch and a daily planner. I am one of a growing number of students who are completing college in three years instead of four–cramming credits in the summer. We’re living life on fast-forward without a pause button.
In my freshman year, my roommates and I survived on Chinese takeout, express pizzas and taco take-home dinners. We ate lunch while walking to class. Every day seemed an endless picnic as we ate with plastic utensils and paper plates. It was fast and easy–no washing up. My girlfriends and I talked about our mothers and grandmothers, models of domesticity, and pitied them. We didn’t see the benefits of staying at home, ironing clothes and making spaghetti sauce when canned sauces were almost as good and cleaning services were so convenient. A nearby store even sold throwaway underwear. “Save time,” the package read. “No laundry.”
We baked brownies in 10 minutes in the microwave and ate the frosting from the can because we were too impatient to wait for the brownies to cool. For a while we thought about chipping in and buying a funky contraption that makes toast, coffee and eggs. All you had to do was put in the raw ingredients the night before and wake up to the smell of sizzling eggs, crispy toast and rich coffee.
My aunt was silent when I told her about plastic utensils, microwave meals and disposable underwear. “It’s a waste of money,” she finally said. I was angry as I stared at her perfect garden, freshly ironed laundry and handmade curtains. “Well, you’re wasting your time,” I said defensively. But I wasn’t so sure.
It seems that all the kids I know are time-saving addicts. Everyone on campus prefers e-mail to snail mail. The art of letter writing is long gone. I know classmates who have forgotten how to write in script, and print like 5-year-olds. More of us are listening to books instead of reading them. My roommate last year jogged while plugged in. She told me she’d listened to John Grisham’s “The Client.” “You mean read,” I corrected. “I didn’t read a word,” she said with pride.
My nearsighted friends opt for throw-away contacts and think the usual lenses are tedious. A roommate prefers a sleeping bag so she doesn’t have to make her bed. Instead of going to the library to do research we cruise the Internet and log on to the Library of Congress.
Schoolkids take trips to the White House via Internet and Mosaic. I heard that one school even considered canceling the eighth-grade Washington trip, a traditional rite of passage, because it’s so easy to visit the the capital on the Information Highway. I remember how excited my eighth-grade classmates and I were about being away from home for the first time. We stayed up late, ate Oreos in bed and roamed around the Lincoln Memorial, unsupervised by adults.
It isn’t as if we’re using the time we save for worthwhile pursuits like volunteering at a soup kitchen. Most of my friends spend the extra minutes watching TV, listening to stereos, shopping, hanging out, chatting on the phone or snoozing.
When I visited my aunt last summer, I saw how happy she was after baking bread or a cake, how proud she seemed whenever she made a salad with her homegrown tomatoes and cucumbers. Why bother when there are ready-made salads, ready-peeled and -cut fruit and five-minute frosting?
Once, when I went shopping with her, she bought ingredients to make a birthday cake for her daughter. I pointed to a lavish-looking cake covered with pink roses. “Why don’t you just buy one,” I asked. “A cake is more than a cake,” she replied. “It’s the giving of energy, the thought behind it. You’ll grow to understand.”
Slowly, I am beginning to appreciate why my aunt takes pleasure in cooking for her family, why the woman down the street made her daughter’s wedding gown instead of opting for Vera Wang, why the old man next door spends so much time tending his garden. He offered me a bag of his fresh-grown tomatoes. “They’re good,” he said. “Not like the ones at the supermarket.” He was right.
Not long ago, I spent a day making a meal for my family. As the pasta boiled and the red peppers sizzled, I wrote a letter to my cousin in Canada. At first the pen felt strange, then reassuring. I hand-washed my favorite skirt and made chocolate cake for my younger sister’s 13th birthday. It took great self-control not to slather on the icing before the cake cooled.
That night I grinned as my father and sister dug into the pasta, then the cake, licking their lips in appreciation. It had been a long time since I’d felt so proud. A week later my cousin called and thanked me for my letter, the first handwritten correspondence she’d received in two years.
Sure, my generation has all the technological advances at our fingertips. We’re computer-savvy, and we have more time. But what are we really saving it for? In the end, we may lose more than we’ve gained by forgetting the important things in life.
