Home Sweet Home Cooking

If more coffee shops and restaurants go out of business, we will be forced to go back to square one. Which is? Home. We eat out for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, it is for show-and-tell or to test a man’s pocket. In the movie Waiting to Exhale, the woman wanted the man to promise her they will eat out twice a week and go on vacation once a year.

In 2024, it is not a matter of going out to eat, it is to run away from home. We don’t want to admit it, but there is something we find repulsive about home, although we live in mansions with ten rooms and I’m not counting the pool house. Our condominiums in Chicago and Vancouver face the waterfront. Did I mention state of the art kitchens? The pandemic proved that we equate staying at home with failure. We tolerate obnoxious bosses and co-workers because we dread being home, should we be fired or accept forced resignation. It is rather ironic because we spend a fortune on weddings so that we can build ‘a home’ with men we purport to love. I’m saying men, because it’s mostly women who have the marriage itch. Men tend to fear it like the plague.

If more coffee shops and restaurants close, we won’t have anywhere to go, to run away from people we live with. People we stopped loving before the 2020  pandemic and people who rub us the wrong way every time they open their mouth. And, I’m not talking about Donald Trump.

But there’s still hope. If more coffee shops and restaurants go out of business, we’ll be forced to tolerate each other at home, learn to re-love. We’ll re-love the kids. We’ll remember that their smiles are like a mini rainbow. It will bring you to tears. “Daddy why are you crying?” Because daddy knows he spends most of his time on the computer smiling at strange women who call him ‘baby.’ And he pays them.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

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