Corporate Wifery

If there’s a career category for it, I think I’ve passed the entry-level test. I have successfully (if temporarily) subsumed any desire for a career of my own, largely because I’m not allowed to work while we’re here. Visa classes being what they are, I am but an appendage to my spouse during this process, slightly galling to the independent feminist in me. Mostly I am not even recognised by my own name but by some bastardisation of Ahmed’s surname with ‘Mrs’ attached aforefront. And without a social security number I am a non-citizen with few rights and concomitantly (on the upside) few responsibilities. Except for the imperative to recycle my husband’s income into the consumer economy. Having reconciled myself to that and taken up shopping as a hobby (seriously dull, but what else is there to do?), I have graduated through phase one with the purchase of …(wait for it)… toast tongs. Just what every home needs. I’m not sure where to from here in terms of purchasing idiocy, but I can’t wait to see what I buy next.

Phase two involved successfully pulling off a dinner for his work colleague and family. A relatively easy task, given my proclivity for entertaining. But it was not without its drama. After browsing the Delicious magazines I brought with me for recipes I’ve been wanting to try and thinking up a menu, I struck problems with finding the necessary ingredients, none of which were particularly exotic – I ended up having to duck out to buy a rolling pin to make pastry as I couldn’t find frozen pastry anywhere. Then I discovered one dinner guest is allergic to beef, the main dish around which my dinner was planned (how 1950s - the meal planning, not the beef allergy). I found out when Ahmed spied me taking beef out of the freezer to thaw and remembered to tell me. Then what I planned to cook required equipment I either didn’t have, or was the wrong size. What should have taken a couple of hours took all day Saturday to prepare. Including the rescue of a dessert disaster. I broke the cardinal rule of not testing a new recipe on guests, as I do frequently at home to my more than forgiving friends. Usually its easily fixed or served in its wonky state and no-one particularly cares but me. But this disaster involved some serious recovery… right at the same moment my Mum rang for her weekly chat. Now those of you that know my Mum [see her blog about her adventures in the Top End of Australia at http://anecdotalramblings.blogspot.com] will know that she loves a chat. I’m pressed for time as we not only have to have dinner ready early as there are kids dining with us, but the balloons are being inflated for the big Thanksgiving Day Parade that afternoon, just across the street and I really wanted to take Yasmin. For the first time in eons, I thanked the heavens for Ahmed’s obsession with technological gadgetry as he proudly got out the new headset and wired me up to the phone so I could walk and talk with both hands free. He now, of course, thinks this convenient rescue for which I was so grateful, entitles him to another squillion bits of gadgetry… I, however, don’t think so.

Anyway, I managed somehow to get the dinner ready on time, and after sending Ahmed and Yasmin off to see the balloons with instructions to call me if it was any good, which they duly did, even I managed to see the balloons as well. We arrived home in time to set the table just before the guests arrived. Ah, we make it look so easy.

The guests were a delight and kept up their end of the bargain, which as we all (should) know is that the first duty of a good guest is to be entertaining. I’m sure I’ve been more sparkling entertainment in times past, but these people have no measure by which to judge, so I got away with being the quiet hostess. A role, some would say is quite a stretch for my performing abilities, but an imperative for the corporate wife.

The third phase, and the most unexpected test of my wife-ing abilities was the call today from Darling Husband asking me to pack him a bag as he was off to Brussels in a couple of hours. In spite of the temptation to gag at such a regressive request (when was the last time a modern girl packed a husband’s bag?) we are nothing if not a team. I know he would do the same for me if the positions were reversed, although I know it wouldn’t happen without a dozen phone calls to locate everything I need and in the end, asking for a list of what I wanted in the bag. (And then me having to come home and repack it anyway.) But in spite of that, and without a list, I packed clothes he might actually wear and toiletries he will use. I even snuck in one of those twee romantic notes for him to find later. (Now I am gagging at myself!) Then I put the bag in the car, picked up Yasmin from school and went to the office so she could say goodbye to Daddy and I could remind him to bring her home a present. Mission accomplished and all in under two hours.

So I think I’ve passed muster and can genuinely lay claim to the title of Corporate Wife (Junior grade). Now that I’ve passed the exam, what next?