The past month, during which Ravid and I have been at my parents' place before we depart to London, has strengthened my suspicion (which I have had for several years) that my family prefers my partner over me.
"Look at how he works at the kitchen," my mother, always a sucker for carbs and cleanliness, says as she looks with glowing eyes at Ravid working the dough ahead of a poppy-seed Swiss roll without even making the slightest crumb fall onto the floor of the kitchen.
"His concentration is just superb," my pottery-enthusiast sister adds. She considers him a successful project, having trained him last year and making him build a small statue of a dog and had him paint it so beautifully, to the point that she had to reprimand her longtime student Daniela for not properly following her instructions, unlike the super-concentrated Ravid.
Even my father, who likes gadgets, is so happy when Ravid tells him about the latest smart objects that my father has been struggling to cope with.
And this was also the case during our self-isolation, when Ravid taught my father to stream all the online concerts from my mother's mobile phone to the TV, so that he would not have to rally to her aid after every horror scream when she realized that the computer screen would turn off
I guess I should be delighted that my kind spouse is beloved by my family, but I must admit that I am also begrudging him.
In order to thank my parents for hosting us, Ravid decided to make Shabbat dinner for all of us every week. It turns out, just like in the military, that the way to a sentry's heart is through their stomach. His culinary enterprises, who evolved into monstrous dimensions during the lockdown days in London, now have an enthusiastic customer base in Israel who are hardly bothered by the price these culinary fantasies of the Don Quixote chef have exacted on the Sancho Panza squire, a miserable man in the Tel Aviv area suffering through the boiling heat with a mask, in search of some simple food.
"Maybe you can just stop whining, " my father growled at me when he took some of the fish Ravid had prepared after our visit to the new fish store, during which I was tasked with waiting in the car, which had taken two parking spaces and therefore got a long of honks and swearwords. When my father returned to the car that day, he said, "Great produce."
"So what if you worked a bit in the kitchen, not a big deal," my mother told me after I complained on the number of pots I had to wash, as she took more from the chicken balls Ravid had prepared just for her, because she is allergic to fish, or at least convinced she is since birth, even though two years ago she ate Fish schnitzel and nothing happened (but she did ask for more).
"He always had two left hands," my sister said when Ravid remarked that I had burned half of the chicken. And while they lavished praise on Ravid for the fig tart that had been presented to them on the table, they resolved that this time I need a citation, because at least I helped chop the vegetables for the salad and I did without complaining even once.
