“Here we go again,” said Hunter S Thompson, allegedly, from the top of a very high hotel, doing that thing he did where a sentence starts as commentary and ends as a threat.
“Why did he say that?” interrupts Mother Dearest, scoffing down the last of her Scouser cocktail. Ten percent white wine, ninety percent cheap vodka, one hundred percent dubious upbringing.
She swirls it around her mouth thoughtfully, as if she’s tasting oak, cherry, and palindromic misunderstanding, then turns to my father’s quizzical left eyebrow.
Cedric Father has only heard the second half of the sentence and is now wondering what, exactly, is going on at the top of this hotel, and whether there are rules against it.
“Miles has a friend who jumped out of a hotel room many times,” Mother Dearest explains, filling in the missing parts of my story with details that exist only at her current blood-alcohol level.
Mothers’ happiest moments were always when they were being gently nudged into a small Drinky-poo or two to “take the edge off”. The more it made sense to her in the moment, the less it would ever integrate into the story later. Coherence was optional.
“Why did he jump?” asks Father, eyebrow number two joining the party.
“And what happened the first time he jumped off?” asks Mother, then answers herself: “I suppose he was in a small hotel.”
“Was he now?” wonders Cedric Father. “Maybe he landed in a swimming pool,” he offers, contributing to the embellishment. “But there should be rules against things like that.”
“He was saying ‘Here we go again’,” I try to explain. “It’s an ambiguous statement. It could mean anything. That’s the interesting part.”
Mother’s hand hovers over the box of white wine, then settles on the vodka bottle. “No point watering down the good stuff,” she says, pouring herself a little todger.
“How is your friend?” asks Father.
“Which one?” I ask.
Welcome to dinner with my parents, where simple sentences go to die.
“The one that jumped out the window, stupid boy!” spits Mother, delighted now that she believes she’s tracking the plot.
Nobody has jumped. Nobody has died. My story was never about a hotel.
But off we go.
Welcome to dinner with my parents, where simple sentences go to die.
When One Word Ruins Your Appetite
It’s not always this dramatic. Sometimes it’s far worse.
The previous evening, the evening debate is about to begin. It’s 19:00 on the dot. The wine cold, the food hot, the child expected to be quiet and grateful.
“We can’t stop here,” says Father, prodding one of Mother’s eggy comestibles, about to launch into something provocative to which I will have no choice but to take an opposing position and allow the evening debate to commence.
“One of the main problems is that people don’t masturbate enough.”
He is leading me toward some semantic subterfuge to which I am ill-prepared to respond.
The sentence lands on the table like the halitosis of a dead Tasmanian devil. I have no immediate reply. He got me there, I think. Clearly there has been some preparation for tonights debate.
There is dead silence after a comment like that. A pause so pregnant it should be paying school fees. You know what I mean?…. and I am sure that you do.
“l am sorry?”, I think in my rather tentative and well practised cognitive dissonances trying not to picture my eighty-year-old father… you know… whatever.
He is leading me toward some semantic subterfuge to which I am ill-prepared to respond.
Our father is making a point that I can’t quite get to, I think to myself.
“Don’t end your thinking with a preposition,” says Mother, without looking up.
Did I say that aloud? Or can she read my mind? Is it getting hot in here?
“That’s a comment up with which I shall not put,” I say, quoting Churchill with profound viscosity, hoping the sheer pomp will disinfect the conversation.
Father meticulates on “They don’t spend enough time enjoying it. They just sit down and swallow it down without a thought. Bloody stupid people.”
“OK, he is on a roll tonight” I think. Mother glares once again. What is it with Mothers and their intuitive and precognitive looks?
As one of the mangrove warbler eggs has just lodged itself in between my oesophagus and that wiggly waggle thing in the back of my throat* I begin to choke.
“Speak up boy,” he says. “Do you have something to say?”
Panic slowly, Miles. Remember your lessons.
“Mother,” I begin, “it’s a bit much speaking to me about… you know… Father… and all that.”
“Our child never listens,” Father announces, resuscitating the conversation.
“People don’t masticate their food enough,” he says, finally revealing the missing letter. “They don’t chew. You know what masticate means don’t you, silly child?”
I do.
I mean I do know what it means.
I don’t… you know… whatever.
So many things are lost in translation.
So many things in my life have been lost in translation, often between someone’s mouth and my ADHD brain, which receives a sentence, drops it on the floor, then hands me a completely different sentence and says, Here. React to this instead.
The Death Conversation (And the Zoo Proposal)
Later that same meal we wandered into the realm of dying, as families do when they’ve run out of safer topics like politics, religion and incest.
Father, logical mind that he is, reasoned that at eighty he has little chance of living many years past this point of chronological cacophony.
One can’t debate this with much expectation of success for three reasons:
- He is right.
- He is my father, who is always right. If he is wrong, see point 1.
- There is no point three. Point three has been eradicated by the recursive nature of points one and two.
Mother gets a bit depressed when Father talks about dying. It isn’t helped by his claim that he doesn’t want money wasted on a coffin. He’d rather be fed to some animals at the zoo.
“It’s not like I’m going to notice,” he says. “I’ll be dead and starting to smell a bit.”
This is not comfort. This is logistics.
But in his mind, it’s also kindness. Practicality. No fuss. No theatre. No sentiment.
That’s Cedric Father’s dialect. Very British. Cool as an English cucumber, or radish, or a cool pumpkin. Does it always have to be a cucumber?
The Last Handshake
Some people share many loving and memorable moments with their fathers.
I shared only two.
The first arrived years later, in a casualty department full of stupid people who had done stupid things to themselves, like falling off motorbikes and stabbing themselves in the foot.
Father’s new cancer treatment has triggered off what we thought was a mild heart attack. I had dutifully brought him in on this strangely windless and warm Sunday evening in the heart of the Eastern Cape of South Africa.
“Stupid bloody people,” muttered Father under his breath, even then, even there, loyal to his favourite mantra.
Some people share many loving and memorable moments with their fathers.
He hadn’t had a heart attack. He was simply exhausted from his treatment and “healing”. He spent the night in hospital and I sat next to him until he fell asleep.
I was suddenly hyper-aware that the man who had taught me to argue, debate, stand my ground, sniff out bullshit and resolve the inherent incongruent chaos of the world may be running out of debate time.
The next day I came to fetch him.
Before I left to drive the 300km back to my own life, Father shuffled into the kitchen with his walking stick and held out his hand to shake mine.
A handshake. Not a hug. We were English. We didn’t do hugs. Hugs were for people who had processed feelings. We were officers and we were gentlemen.
He shook my hand like he’d never met me before, stared me in the eyes, and said:
“Thank you for looking after me last night.”
From the outside it looked like nothing.
From the inside it was a cathedral.
I looked back at him and said it was my deepest pleasure and honour to look after my father.
It was the last time we shook hands.
The Sentence That Didn’t Get Lost
A week later Mother called. Father had fallen out of bed. She was in a wheelchair. The neighbour arrived. There were comments about carers and frail care and the quiet terror of a life getting smaller.
When I walked into the bedroom I realised there would no longer be any need for the walking stick.
Father would never walk again.
This was a major risk. We were English. We didn’t say things like that. It felt unfair to drop a sentence like that into the room and expect him to catch it while his body was leaving.
I helped him drink his favourite lemon drink and laid his far too bony cranium gently onto the pillow.
And I thought: it’s now or never.
Say it. Don’t translate it. Don’t soften it. Don’t try to be clever.
“I love you Dad.”
This was a major risk. We were English. We didn’t say things like that. It felt unfair to drop a sentence like that into the room and expect him to catch it while his body was leaving.
He blinked, looked at me, and said:
“I love you, matey.”
Which is pretty much as good as it gets.
Nothing was lost in translation at that moment.
It had taken forty-six years for us to exchange those words, but they landed cleanly, like a coin finally hitting the bottom of a well.
Words are slippery, actions less so.
But sometimes, if you stop trying to win, and you just say the thing, the words behave.
And the rest of your life is basically learning the difference between those two moments.
*Wiggly Waggly Thing AKA Uvula. A small, teardrop-shaped piece of connective tissue and muscle hanging from the soft palate between the tonsils. Apparently. Use it, don’t use it. I just did.
