Fifth Commandment Fun
As a rule, there are almost no circumstances under which I am required to volunteer hours and hours with narrow-minded, suburban, fundamentalist, Republican septuagenarians with odd tics, limited vocabularies, passive-agressive tendencies, and an almost unlimited capacity for emotional repression. I am thankful for this. The exception, however, is unavoidable: visits to, and in the case of the past two days, from, my parents. It has been a good couple days, but I am never all that sorry to see them bugger off.
Thankfully, there was much activity with which to disperse the frustration. I put them up, first of all, at a friend's house (thanks again, BW) instead of in the rather cramped office/spare bedroom, which not only gave everyone a break but reduced the amount of de-sinnification necessary. (Pater and Mater have the habit of reading every book and letter and note lying about, and also of absent-mindedly opening drawers, so anything indicative of non-monkery has to be carefully secreted away.) And it does help to minimize the sitting-around time. So M. and B. and I cooked a pistachio encrusted pork loin and some bread pudding with whiskey sauce, and filled any awkward silences by talking amongst ourselves. The awkward silences are somewhet inevitable; Mom can't hear very well, and Dad runs out of things to say very quickly, which is also why he tends to read signs out loud. (It's his single most irritating habit, not because of the reading per se, but because of the vacuousness it indicates; he isn't making a point about a garage sale; he's simply saying "garage sale" for the sake of making sounds. I remember going with him to the British Museum, home to many of the most numinous examples of textual culture that our species has produced. There are illuminated medieval manuscripts; there are the original drafts of Alice in Wonderland, Middlemarch, and Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind;" they've got both the Rosetta stone and the napkin on which John Lennon wrote the lyrics to "Help." My father said nothing in comment or inquiry about any of these texts, but when we emerged into an uncharacteristically sunny Bloomsbury, the first words from his mouth were "Taystee Freeze." I'm not kidding.)
Anyway, so after dinner we went for a walk, got some bottled creme soda and used one of the College auditoria as a private movie theater for a screening of Finding Neverland, which thankfully had no swearing or sex. They seemed to enjoy themselves, and it seemed like a day well spent.
I do feel bad about being so irritated by my parents, by the way, especially at a time like this, when Dad's sister-in-law is dying of cancer in Kansas. I've always felt guilty about it. It's just that they have no real idea who I am. They're often sweet, in their narrow-minded, thought-averse way, but that's about it. I really do want to like my father, but I haven't been able to since I was about thirteen. And Mom and I will never be close; the cello incident made that apparent. They're certainly disappointed in me, and that, combined with the 41-year age gap and their diametric opposition to many of my beliefs--not because they oppose my values, but because they do not read newspapers or believe that non-biblical ideas have value or worth--makes it difficult to bond over anything more important than dessert.
Case in point: the next morning at breakfast I temporarily forgot that I should not attempt to make a point of any kind, and opined on the idiocy of blind patriotism. This, apparently, was foolish. My father mentioned Colin Powell and I believe I said I would rather have resigned as Secretary of State than knowingly lied to the U.N. to promote a war in which I did not believe. Powell, in fact, seems like a good poster boy for my point. What I was forgetting, of course, was that even if President Bush were personally kicking my mother to death in the gutter, any attempt to point this situation out to my parents would be met with distrust and opposition. "It's difficult to know what to believe, with the media like it is," my Mom would say, in between kicks.
Having made M. (who was already nervous about getting along with my parents) and Mom and Dad (who believe that disagreement is of the devil) thoroughly uncomfortable with my contentious un-niceness, we changed the subject by going for rides in one of my Psychology colleagues' Air Coupe. This is an antique plane that was sold in the forties at places like J.C. Penny, on the assumption that it was the way of the future for everyone to fly to work. It's made so that anyone can fly it, and as a result, has lots of window space. Dad, who used to fly a lot but hasn't in a while, quietly had a blast. Mom was quite chuffed, and M. hooted with joy. I took aerial pictures of my apartment which probably won't come out, and it was the most fun I ever had in a plane.
We managed to get through the rest of the day all right, with naps, shallow conversation, a very awkward lunch, a wander by the lake, and Mom and Dad coming to rehearsal (with me cringingly glancing at them everytime someone made an innuendo...like normal people sometimes do). We had breakfast this morning again, this time focusing on puns and motorcycles instead of the abstractions of political philosophy, and they drove off a few minutes ago. I feel like I've put in my time until the next visit. You're not supposed to feel that way about your parents, are you?
Thankfully, there was much activity with which to disperse the frustration. I put them up, first of all, at a friend's house (thanks again, BW) instead of in the rather cramped office/spare bedroom, which not only gave everyone a break but reduced the amount of de-sinnification necessary. (Pater and Mater have the habit of reading every book and letter and note lying about, and also of absent-mindedly opening drawers, so anything indicative of non-monkery has to be carefully secreted away.) And it does help to minimize the sitting-around time. So M. and B. and I cooked a pistachio encrusted pork loin and some bread pudding with whiskey sauce, and filled any awkward silences by talking amongst ourselves. The awkward silences are somewhet inevitable; Mom can't hear very well, and Dad runs out of things to say very quickly, which is also why he tends to read signs out loud. (It's his single most irritating habit, not because of the reading per se, but because of the vacuousness it indicates; he isn't making a point about a garage sale; he's simply saying "garage sale" for the sake of making sounds. I remember going with him to the British Museum, home to many of the most numinous examples of textual culture that our species has produced. There are illuminated medieval manuscripts; there are the original drafts of Alice in Wonderland, Middlemarch, and Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind;" they've got both the Rosetta stone and the napkin on which John Lennon wrote the lyrics to "Help." My father said nothing in comment or inquiry about any of these texts, but when we emerged into an uncharacteristically sunny Bloomsbury, the first words from his mouth were "Taystee Freeze." I'm not kidding.)
Anyway, so after dinner we went for a walk, got some bottled creme soda and used one of the College auditoria as a private movie theater for a screening of Finding Neverland, which thankfully had no swearing or sex. They seemed to enjoy themselves, and it seemed like a day well spent.
I do feel bad about being so irritated by my parents, by the way, especially at a time like this, when Dad's sister-in-law is dying of cancer in Kansas. I've always felt guilty about it. It's just that they have no real idea who I am. They're often sweet, in their narrow-minded, thought-averse way, but that's about it. I really do want to like my father, but I haven't been able to since I was about thirteen. And Mom and I will never be close; the cello incident made that apparent. They're certainly disappointed in me, and that, combined with the 41-year age gap and their diametric opposition to many of my beliefs--not because they oppose my values, but because they do not read newspapers or believe that non-biblical ideas have value or worth--makes it difficult to bond over anything more important than dessert.
Case in point: the next morning at breakfast I temporarily forgot that I should not attempt to make a point of any kind, and opined on the idiocy of blind patriotism. This, apparently, was foolish. My father mentioned Colin Powell and I believe I said I would rather have resigned as Secretary of State than knowingly lied to the U.N. to promote a war in which I did not believe. Powell, in fact, seems like a good poster boy for my point. What I was forgetting, of course, was that even if President Bush were personally kicking my mother to death in the gutter, any attempt to point this situation out to my parents would be met with distrust and opposition. "It's difficult to know what to believe, with the media like it is," my Mom would say, in between kicks.
Having made M. (who was already nervous about getting along with my parents) and Mom and Dad (who believe that disagreement is of the devil) thoroughly uncomfortable with my contentious un-niceness, we changed the subject by going for rides in one of my Psychology colleagues' Air Coupe. This is an antique plane that was sold in the forties at places like J.C. Penny, on the assumption that it was the way of the future for everyone to fly to work. It's made so that anyone can fly it, and as a result, has lots of window space. Dad, who used to fly a lot but hasn't in a while, quietly had a blast. Mom was quite chuffed, and M. hooted with joy. I took aerial pictures of my apartment which probably won't come out, and it was the most fun I ever had in a plane.
We managed to get through the rest of the day all right, with naps, shallow conversation, a very awkward lunch, a wander by the lake, and Mom and Dad coming to rehearsal (with me cringingly glancing at them everytime someone made an innuendo...like normal people sometimes do). We had breakfast this morning again, this time focusing on puns and motorcycles instead of the abstractions of political philosophy, and they drove off a few minutes ago. I feel like I've put in my time until the next visit. You're not supposed to feel that way about your parents, are you?
posted by James at 8:01 AM
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