Excuse Me While I Explode free essay sample

The Author, E. S Maduro is very angry at the situation her mother finds herself in. She is angry that her father never helps her mother with house chores. When she was younger, she did not really care about her father not helping her mother with chores around the house because everything was done for her by the time she got back from school. As she grew older, she started noticing that only her mother did house chores and her father did not. She was disappointed and angry with her mother for not asking for help and she was also determined to never be in a relationship with a man like her father. â€Å"Laundry, and dusting and shopping were far outside my elementary-school-age mind†. Here, Maduro admits that when she was younger, she was naive about the chores at home. (255). â€Å"As I grew older, however, my awareness of our household began to change†. We will write a custom essay sample on Excuse Me While I Explode or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Here it shows that as a person grows older, he or she becomes more responsible. † Even though she was busy at home taking care of the house, Maduro’s mother went back to school, at age of forty-five. My mother went back to school, at age of forty-five, became a special ed teacher. After that she, she often came home exhausted at 5:30 and began making dinner. † He she starts to see how hard her mother works and begins to feel for her. (255). She also started noticing how her mother does not have time for herself and only time for taking care of the house. â€Å"Gradually, I began to notice that never seemed to have a moment for herself. † She feels sorry for her mother, that she does not have time for herself that she is always busy taking care of the chores at the house without her husband helping her. In other hand, she also starts noticing that her father who does all the manly chores of the house always time left for his hobbies. ‘I realized that my father, who took care of all the â€Å"manly† household chores— chopping wood, killing mice, still had time for a well-respected career and a whole slew of regular hobbies. † Here she starts questioning how her father has all the time to do other things and her mother only has time to take care of the household chores. She started also to notice the unfair advantage that her father has over her mother in this aspect. 256). â€Å"Why don’t you divorce him and find a husband who will offer to clean up the kitchen after dinner and let you sit down for once. † She angrily asks her mother why she is still putting up with her father. She was growing frustrated with her mother not refusing to do any chores. She could not understand why her father was not willing to help out her mother. (256). She then met her own boyfriend Paul. She describes her as something totally different from her. Paul was the total opposite of her father and she was glad to much a man with such qualities. Though I love my father, passionately, I was certain that the man of my life would know how to cook dinner and clean the house, would offer to do the dishes, would fold the laundry without being asked. † After seeing what her mother was going through, she was not ready to go through the same thing. She wanted a man that she could share house chores with without being asked. (256) On her first date, Paul â€Å"offered to cook† her dinner and when the dinner was over â€Å"he did all the dishes. When she’d go by his house, she ‘would marvel at the way he seemed to take care of cleaning up kitchen, the way he would look disapprovingly at his housemates’ dirty underwear on the bathroom floor. † She was happy and relieved that she had found a man who was totally different from a father. (257) Everything with her and Paul was perfect until she visited Paul’s family. â€Å"The dinner was over in about eight minutes, and almost as if by a feat of magic, everyone was gone from the kitchen before I had even put down my fork. She is starting to notice the similarities with Paul, his father and her father. She may be thinking that all men are equal. While she was helping Paul’s mother clean the kitchen, Paul was playing the piano, and Paul’s father was reading a book. â€Å"Surely, he can’t realize I’m still in the kitchen, washing his plate†, she thought. She started to notice a new personality of Paul, a personality that she wanted to avoid at all costs, because of what she witnessed her mother going through. (257) She and Paulo started living together. They had a great relationship, they trusted each other, loved each other, but things started to worsen because Paul did not help her with household chores. She started getting angry when she notices Paul was not helping her. One day she came back home at night and started making dinner and Paul said â€Å"What can I do to help? † and she simply would get angry and shoot back him, â€Å"Well, I’m starving and exhausted and I don’t really feel like waiting around for you to finish your internet search. † After some minutes she would ask herself, why she had not let him help. Maybe it’s because she was frustrated because he waited for her to come home. Maybe it’s also because she wanted him to have the initiative to start doing chores. She later realized that the reason she so angry at her boyfriend is that she feels â€Å"angry at the confusion of adoring my mother, of thinking that she is a phenomenal woman who raised her children with grace and style, of thinking I would give anything to be like her. † She is confused for wanting to be like her mother and not wanting to do what her mother did. She is torn between two things in one person.