Hey love!
We spent the day setting up for the meal, and making a potato-carrot dish, and some other things. [There follow three paragraphs about cooking, that I will skip.]
Also I have a problem with Stan, the son of Paul and Vicky. During the course of the evening he smashed one of Carole’s cute, decorative little plates for hors d’oeuvres; climbed up on top of the outdoor fireplace and pounded on the metal chimney; grabbed a glass of ice water off the table and shoved his hand inside to grab the ice cubes; and generally behaved himself like a Visigoth. I had hopes that he would at least sit at the kids’ table. But he told Paul that he wanted to sit at the other table and Paul should sit at the kid's table. And Paul accepted that. ( WTF?? Stan is ... maybe five? I forget, but around that.) So Stan sat at the adult table while Paul sat at the kids’ table. Vicky, thank God, took a seat at the adult table next to Stan.
And then he was up and down at random during the meal, never asking to be excused but sliding off his chair when he felt bored and coming back when he felt like grabbing another bite. At one point he came back to the table with a huge basket on his head, one he had been wearing off and on all evening. (He said he was a knight with a helmet.) That was too much; there was too much risk that the basket was going to knock something else off the table. So I barked at him automatically, “No, Stan! You can’t wear the basket to the table. You can wear the basket or sit at the table, but not both.” Honestly I never thought about it. It was a spontaneous reflex.
Brief silence. Vicky looks at Carole questioningly, as if to ask, “It’s your house — do you agree?” Carole said something ... I don’t even remember what. It didn’t amount to much. Then Vicky engaged in a long whispered discussion with Stan, presumably explaining something to him. And eventually he went away.
What I would have hoped for was solidarity among adults: “Well if Hosea says so then do it, regardless of the merits.” (God knows I gave Wife that solidarity too often, when she demanded something crazy of the boys and I told them that if Mommy said so then they had to do it.) I didn’t get it. And of course without that backup, what it meant was that I was ordering around someone else’s kid with no authority to do so.
I finished my food and sat quietly for a while. Stan got down. After a while Vicky got down. At that point I bussed my dishes. Then I walked over to Vicky and told her, “The last thing I ever want to do is to undermine your authority with Stan, so I was really out of line and I apologize for saying anything.” She said not to worry about it. She said she agreed that the basket didn’t belong on his head at the table, and not to worry because it was fine. I suppose it is just a sign of what a corrupt and horrible person I am that this didn’t reassure me much. It’s exactly what I would have expected from someone whose main concern was to avoid unpleasantness. (After all, if she had truly agreed why didn’t she say something?) Unfortunately I also think that if you prioritize the avoidance of unpleasantness that more or less disqualifies you as a parent.
I cannot help but reflect that the strongest criticism Wife ever had of my family was that (so she said) they too often tried to avoid unpleasantness. Another way to say this is that they are kind people, forever loyal to each other, generous in their assumptions about others, rational and liberal in all the best ways. And God knows that these are stellar virtues in dealing with adults. But they are vices in raising small children.
I hate — truly this is not rhetoric — to think that I am agreeing with Wife ( of all people!) against my family ( of all people!). And in no other context besides this could that ever be possible or even imaginable. But.
After I apologized to Vicky I stepped quietly outside for a while. After quite a few minutes Vicky came out to ask if I was OK. I could not give a coherent explanation of what space my head was in, so I mumbled something incoherent. She repeated at greater length that it was all fine and I shouldn’t worry about it. I said I would come in again after I cleared my head. And after some minutes more I finally came back in.
I never meant to write a complete account of the whole evening. So I haven’t and I won’t. I came back in, got some more wine, then after a while got some pie, and sat somewhere away from Stan. After a longer while, Paul and Vicky left, taking with them Stan and their two-year-old daughter. The rest of us sat around chatting aimlessly. The two other kids (sons of my other cousins) wrestled vigorously and interminably on the floor. Jenny [mother of one] cautioned them a couple of times; so did Fred [father of the other]. And for all the energy they were exerting, neither one ever behaved like anything less than a(n age-appropriate) gentleman. So it’s not that I’ve just become a Grumpy Old Man who has forgotten what it is like to be a kid. Those two were delightful. It’s just Stan who was a savage.
Jenny and I traded stories about raising sons. She talked about someone she had met who had two daughters (both perfectly behaved) and said she had wondered, “Honestly if you’ve only had girls can you even call yourself a mother?” 😊 I told her that while naturally my data sample has been very small, I have always considered her son to have exquisite manners for his age. She rolled her eyes and said there were a few exceptions; but then she stopped being sarcastic and said she understood what I meant, and thanked me for it.
At this point I’ve had yet more to drink, and it’s quite late. Everyone has gone home except those (like me) who are staying here in this house for the night. And I still wonder: Am I overreacting? Or is it better if I skip venues where Stan is going to be present? Unfortunately that means big family gatherings like this one, and I don’t see my extended family on any other occasions.
I don’t expect you to answer this question, so don’t bother trying. But I am disturbed.
I hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving.
Never forget that I love you ever.
Your Hosea
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