Things i think about while washing up...

When I was a kid my grandma would often suggest I do the washing up, but she could never just ask me.
She would say things like "Can you do the washing up for your mother?" or "Rosie, you should do the washing up before your mother comes home" (other variations included "be a good girl and... ")
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Now, this used to annoy me a lot at the time, and i never really knew why. Sometimes i would snap back "if **you** want me to do it, just ask me to do it." (while thinking, and don't guilt me into it based on what you imagine my mother might want)
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it's occurred to me, just now, that there are at least two problematic things going on when we say to someone "Can you do this task for you mother" .. And probably i instinctively knew this, and it's why I always flinched at it.
1) it implies that the only person who might benefit from the task being done is a person's mother, thereby teaching us that only mothers do housework, and only mothers appreciate it being done by someonelse.
2)secondly, and i think this is perhaps more interesting, i don't learn to do the washing up because it is a good thing to do, or simply because it needs doing, i learn to do it, that i might please someone, or be considered a good girl. which is disturbing because housework should not be moral or gendered. it just should be done. (And yes, i am writing a thesis on how we regulate behavior)
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I then thought about how sometimes, back in the day, i would be doing the washing up at church, perhaps after supper, or after youthgroup and all the kids had gone home, and often I would clean up for my group and other groups, and someone (usually a man), would say something like "Its so good of you to do all this", or they would imply it was my spiritual gifting. And its a good thing I was also gifted with **some** patience or else there might have been a lot of punched faces, because i would politely smile, or with gritted teeth say, 'someone has to do it', but in my head i would be screaming "THIS IS NOT A SPIRITUAL GIFT. THE WASHING UP JUST HAS TO GET DONE. HERE IS A F*@KING TEA TOWEL"
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but at the same time, i had learned that doing this did somehow make me morally virtuous. maybe people would affirm me and give me a round of applause and say "well done Rosie".
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and now i think about how i found the New Testament story of Mary and Martha problematic. and i remember how the standard take home was to being encouraged to spend time in God's word, and i used to feel smacked in the face, because somehow simultaneously, i was a good girl when i cleaned up, and people wanted to call it a gift, yet it was also not to be done, because spending time at the feet of Jesus was better.

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And whatever other lessons might be in that passage, i couldn't hear them, because my self worth (and maybe my salvation) was somehow in the washing up but it also wasn't, and i knew this .
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the take home is not that i often got angry or upset while busily doing things for my church.I did those things (mostly) with energy and enthusiasm, and yes, i do sometimes regret the hours of my life I poured into those activities, but i did them believing them to be of value, and all things said and done, i am glad i did it, and thankful for those years. .. When i started writing this I didn't even realise it was connected to memories of church. that just kind of happened.
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the take home is that something as simple as how we talk about an everyday task can actually contribute to all sorts of complex ideas about morality and ethics, about identity, about what it is to be a girl, and about who should do housework.