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Discovering Israel — Part 5
The General’s Son by Miko Peled
Another book I read through my Palestine book club. And another book I would highly recommend. It has taught me so much about knowledge. It had made me reflect on me, my life, my grandparents, and my education so much that I’m struggling to keep this article about the book and not about myself.
It starts with his grandmothers. One was a professional woman and the other a housewife. That’s not the fun part, the fun part is the importance of being thrifty. It made me laugh. First mistake his ‘professional’ grandmother made is to tell boys about being thrifty. That’s not the job of the ‘males’ — feel free to laugh, but this was normal in my home country especially after World War II. Girls were taught to be thrifty as a way of teaching them to be good mothers, wives and, ultimately, women. Men didn’t need to learn this because their job is to make money and bring it home. It was the job of the women to make that money go as far as possible. However, it had to be done without denying your family comfort.
There is no mention of his ‘housewife’ grandmother being thrifty, but I’m willing to bet that whenever she peeled anything (apple, potato, beetroot, anything) she knew how to peel it thin so there is no waste. She also probably turned off the water, the lights, and everything else whenever it wasn’t needed. If there was a fire on, I doubt she would have used a match to light something else. That would be a waste. You can use any old piece of wood to set that a light with the fire that’s already on, so that you don’t waste a match. Thrifty!
Ever wondered why kids in those days looked like they’re in uniforms? It’s because their mothers made the clothes and they’d get one huge piece of cloth, make all the outfits for like nine kids, that way there was very little material wasted, and it was cheaper, and easier to purchase. When it comes to economics, there is no match for these women. In Bosnia, even today we have foreigners wondering how a woman feeds her whole family with so little. One official from Europe even said that he would make one of these women in charge of the national budget.
I still have huge respect for those women. I don’t care what anyone says. Thrifty women made their husband’s lives a little easier, even…
