My Mother's Kitchen/My Father's Workshop

I grew up in a modest household,
a house with a lot to be modest about
where my parents divided the powers 
that ran the house between them thus;
dad's shed, his workshop, was where we
were forbidden from touch the things in it,
lest they be seemingly lost forever;
so touchy was he about his personal order.

Nearly as touchy as he was about the surface order
in the house which he said he owned outright,
and he charged Mother with maintaining decorum,
thereof, whilst as children we tried to grow up
through the inconsistent divisions
the house was meant to maintain. 

I could not count the number of contradictory demands
that he insisted she settle, as she was made
to balance the finance, help us grow up,
and we all had to learn to live alongside a man
who, like many patriarchs, misunderstood the limits
and consequences of the rules he set,
rules that he exempted himself from.

Sexual fidelity, in particular
was one subject that remained mysterious;
 all practical discussion of sex was verboten.

My father was the warning to me
about how patriarchy puts others on pedestals
they will struggle to come down from, once put on them. 

As an adult I have had to deal with the habit
of resisting throwing things out, founded on
Mother's shared memories of maximum recycling
and the rationing through the ration books
the government issued  that she grew up with. 

It was reasoning like hers that made the kitchen
her fiefdom, hers for us to keep out of
when she was cooking, though we were accepted
when the matter came to doing the washing up
before we all watched Crossroads of an evening.

Mother had to have her 'queen bee' to admire
and Meg Mortimer/Noel Gordon was a queen indeed,
though I preferred the camp chef Shughie McFee 
for how camp he was, and for his being temperamental.

You can guess how I turned out.
I was not born to be part of a family...