I believe that formal meals are an important part of our family life. It is something that my wife and I try to have with our children at least once week, usually on Sunday nights. We think it is a good way that kids can practice dining out but better still; by using this as a regular family conference it is especially good for family communication. I have learnt from bitter experience how critical communication is with your loved ones.
I just think that children should feel uninhibited to talk about things with adults that are important to them from an early age. If they do not, I believe it carries on into adulthood and to their detriment there will be things that they do not share and should with their love ones.
I just seem to think that we can talk about all sorts of things but avoid that which will really matter. So here is my story to how I came to that conclusion.
In our small family we have a daughter Helen who is nine, Mikey at seven and of course there is my wife, Lily. This Sunday night we were having a practice because we had been invited to a special dinner with a visiting head of a children's charity that my wife and I supported. It was going to be a small affair with just our family and the president's family in recognition of our support. It would be at a top class restaurant so we were a little nervous therefore we wanted our children skilled up on table manners.
Tonight the first task was the handling of the table napkin. "OK guys, why do you put the napkin on your lap?"
Silence
"Mikey, do you have any ideas?"
Mikey shakes his head vigorously.
"Well if you don't you might spill something on your pants and everyone will think you have done something in them."
Raucous giggling from the guys; and on it went.
At the end of dinner and before our pudding we usually have a chat about what's happening in their lives and what they are doing at school. On this day Helen had been doing her homework and wanted to know what I did in the pandemic. She had been told that health workers were the heroes of the pandemic and as I was a doctor she assumed that included me. Unfortunately during the pandemic I was a cop. This was the first that Helen had heard of this and she was disappointed.
I did have my adventures though and I gave her the very short sanitised version and she seemed happy with that.
Actually it is a period of my life that I usually try to forget. Talking to Helen, I noticed my wife glancing at me nervously and she did have good reason. I had not really thought about it for years and having to explain some of it reignited feelings of shame and guilt that I had bottled up so long ago.
After the kids and my wife had gone to bed I settled into my easy chair in the living area, put on some music and pondered a wave of painful nostalgia. Normally I just feel like that period was a part of some ones else's experience. It couldn't be more removed from my current life; but tonight those visceral feelings had surfaced and with it an acute sadness.
In my daydream state an image surfaced. It was probably the most bizarre image of my life and I'm a doctor so I have seen many strange things. The image was of a naked Black man-woman stretched as stiff as aboard and pumping, with the largest penis I had ever seen, a curled up woman, a quite angelic woman on her back, allowing that man-woman total access to her body. It was a bizarre but also erotic image that I would call on many times when a drought of intimacy would require me to self-stimulate for relief.
As is so common with these tales, the sadness all started with a woman, Fleur. She was the one enjoying the sex that I was dreaming about. Fleur was an extraordinary character really. She was off a farm and boarded at an exclusive private school as I did, but when we met in London she was an escort.
For the time we were together I never really knew much about Fleur's family life. I did meet her mother a couple of times. Fleur didn't like talking about the past much so I never really understood why she ended up as an escort except to say she had a dream of being a high class call girl, a sort of courtesan but it never really turned out that way. Fleur had romantic notions about the ancient Greek hetairi.
Me, I was off a back country farm. My Mother was highly intellectual and a lefty. She was unusual in her own right. We had a house full of books. She had been a townie when my father met her. She had been a librarian; somehow Dad lured her away to the back blocks. Mum took to it as long as she had her books and she would write away for them and visit the library in the nearest town. When amazon came along she was in seventh heaven and the books increased exponentially. She had not one but two rural book clubs on the go so she had gathered together a reasonable group of rural literati.
She liked to write poetry and short stories and had many of them published, she stopped when such things went on line. She did not feel comfortable writing for on line publication. She adored the printed word.
I would say dad was pretty intelligent as well but in a different way. He was very self-reliant, seeing we were so far from town. As well as a farmer he was a carpenter, joiner, plumber, and mechanic you name it. He would bemoan modern cars as he couldn't tinker like he used to but he did take to computers even if we had to rely on satellite for an internet connection. He was always full of sage advice but as his intellect was a little different from Mums.
I never really appreciated it until I read a book named "Zen and the Art of motorcycle maintenance." I think you can get my drift from the name of the book what that might have been about. It was inspirational for me as I understood then how logical and creative Dad's mind was and why so much I took for granted happened around the farm.
Like I said Mum was a lefty and involved herself in a number of worthy causes. She did work for the labour party which was a mission in an area where most people voted the other way.
Unfortunately she was to develop cancer but it hardly slowed her down, working to help get Jacinda Adern voted in as Prime Minister. It was to be her swansong. On the cabinet beside her bed in the hospice she had a photograph of the newly elected PM giving her a pre-COVID hug. To Mum a hug from the PM was akin to being bestowed with a Dame-hood and she could die happy with the recognition that she had helped elect someone she so believed in.
My father was not a lefty by any means but he did not wear his politics on his sleeve and he was gracious enough in their marriage to tolerate Mum's views.
Not long before he died and after the COVID 19 lockdown he was getting a bit maudlin over a few drinks when he exclaimed, "You know, I never really went along with your Mothers politics and when this girl got voted in and your Mother was over the moon, I had these misgivings.
I really did not think the slip of the girl was going to come to much. But you know I am happy to be proved wrong. When you think of that cluster fuck over there in that kakistocracy of a democracy we will know and love, I really think that no-one could have done any better than Jacinda.
I take my hat off to Mum for backing the right horse. My only regret is that Mum did not live to see her goddess in her finest hour. I would have been quite happy to hear Mum telling me. 'I told you so.'
As I said my Dad was a gracious man and his love for my Mum transcended her politics and all her other eccentricities.
Mum's death hit me badly. I was working my way through law school at the time. I kind of lost my way when she died and I decided to take time out and go to the UK which was where I met Fleur.
I won't dwell too much on my time there; it wasn't long but meeting Fleur was a thing. I stayed with an old school friend, Mike in his apartment when I arrived. He had a job in finance and a couple of days after arriving he took me to a cocktail bar. There weren't too many kiwis in this part of London but one of the waitresses serving us was. As the night went on the flirting became intense. She was a farm girl like me and we hit it off from the word go. Right from the start I got this thing about her. She seemed a pretty good looking brunette but I confess I did not look much beyond her eyes and smile. She was working with two others, a blonde Eastern European woman and a flaming red haired Scot. All wore brief black uniforms and were stunners. It's easy to see what the qualifications for the job were, boobs, butt and legs. Towards the end of the evening one of the girls invited us back to their apartment. It was late but we were out to party. I can honestly say that it was absolutely the wildest night of my life. We were pretty tanked when we arrived. The apartment was not exactly a bedsitter. The blonde European girl, Lina, occupied it. She bragged that she had a daddy that treated her right.
"You are not exclusive then?" I asked with a smirk.
"Only when he is in town; but that's not very often."