Products We Inherited From Parents
There are three types of products we put in the shopping basket.
l Memory products because parents used them when we were growing up.
l Advertised products because we see them every 60 seconds when watching movies.
l No Name products. They are cheaper because there’s no fancy packaging, just spaghetti in shiny paper.
MEMORY PRODUCTS
Memory products invoke childhood memories, some good, some bad. Cleaning products like soap and furniture polish remind me of mama because dirt frightened her, even an orphan speck of dust with no brothers and sisters. It’s only my mother who had a solution for slightly dirty walls. Soap and water. I bet other mothers suggested a coat of paint.
Today I saw a memory product that made us wonder if she was our biological mother. Brasso. The product name is explanatory. It shines brass. Mama had a four poster brass bed. It was always shining because she couldn’t stand the brass fading a bit.
Silvo is another product that reminds me of how house proud mama was. Maybe it’s because she was a sleep-in domestic servant in apartheid South Africa. We only saw her weekends and holidays. Her buying habits were influenced by her white employers.
They had silver forks and knives. She cleaned them with Silvo. Mama bought cutlery sets, silver ones and guess who cleaned them? Us. It was for a good cause I suppose. She sent me to college. How, when she was a domestic slave? I don’t know, because budgeting eludes me.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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