When my sister came to visit the other weekend it was as if the perfectly lovely dinner we all had over several bottles of wine was far too an inaccurate reflection of our family gatherings, and one that was in need of immediate rectification. This was duly provided the following morning.
It was a Saturday and my mother, clearly torn between wanting to an enjoy a weekend activity with her two girls, and staying out of the way, loitered in the background in her dressing gown trying to feign casualness by asking ‘if we had any plans?’, which would have worked in sounding perfectly innocent had she stuck to asking the question one, rather than fifteen, times.
As it turns out, my sister and I did have plans, plans for a quiet coffee, alone. But with my mother’s incessant questioning chiming in unpleasant harmony with The Boy smashing toys into the wall, I forgot myself, and asked my mother to come too. As soon as I did this she whipped her dressing gown off faster than Clarke Kent in a phonebox, revealing she was dressed and ready to go.
Having mum rearing to go, keys in hand and lingering by the door while we were still bleary eyed in our pajamas suddenly induced a certain air of haste and panic to the plan, which had things looking much more like usual already.
All we needed was to add some miscommunication to the mix to have things feeling really familiar, and The Yang, naturally, could be relied on for this. Because after insisting I go and enjoy a quiet coffee with my sister, he then decided to come in the car with The Boy to ‘get a lift’, which as we will see later, soon translated into ‘joining us at the café’.
My father, upon seeing that we were preparing to take The Boy – a.k.a coffee shop destroyer – with us started huffing and puffing in the background before incredulously crying out to Jesus Christ about the Hell we are all doing taking a toddler to a bloody ‘la-de-da café’ (anything that is not a RSL club serving meat and three veg generally equates to being ‘full of fucking yuppies’ according to my father). But this typical outburst of his pisses me right off so we now have a healthy dose of tension in the atmosphere to make us all feel right at home.
And after some further scurrying, shrieking and smashing (by The Boy) we piled into the car in the familiar familial state of frazzled nerves. Our destination was a newly opened café-come-secondhand bookstore a few suburbs away, which sounds perfectly quaint, and it was, until we arrived like a screeching flap of hillbilly’s.
Although The Yang came under the guise of getting a lift up the road he is lured by the thought of a hot drink on a cold day and interprets my, “so what are you guys going get up to?” as an invitation to come and join us. This results in me sitting down inside directly across from The Yang and GLARING at him, which strangely, does not go unnoticed by my mother and sister, who exchange knowing looks and start fidgeting uncomfortably in their chairs.
Tensions continue to run high, this time over the all important discussion on whether or not we need order at the counter, or if they will come to our table. This is deliberated over in a series of high-strung whispers that are totally audible in the QUIET quaint café bookshop, and at least result in getting the attention of the waitress, who comes to our table.
When my mother’s coffee arrives first she spoons a smidgen of froth and chocolate off the top and offers it to The Boy at which point my high pitched whispers switch to full throttle screeches of “what the hell are you doing giving him coffee? You can’t give him coffee!”, causing my mother to quickly retract her offer, The Boy to promptly start howling at the injustice, and leaving me in the sudden position of receiving, rather than giving, glares.
The Boy is now inconsolable, made worse by the fact that he is the last one to get given a drink of milk. The rest of us sit sipping on our tepid and weak coffees, muttering misgivings about this new café under our breath while The Yang downs his drink in one hand, restrains The Boy in the other, then quickly makes to get the hell out of there although he fails to move fast enough to escape my last minute jab thanking him for my ‘quiet coffee’. These underhanded remarks sufficiently take the tension up a few notches into the usual family gathering range of ‘boiling point’.
The cafe is clearly designed for leisurely coffee drinking and book browsing, but things have become so awkward and uncomfortable that we all polish our drinks off in a matter of minutes and disperse to look at the books, my mother is finished after around 30 seconds and then stands by the door ready to leave.
My sister, who is still browsing, realizes she needs the loo only to discover there isn’t one in the shop. She responds to this news by repeating her need for the loo, each time with rising panic, in between continuing to pluck titles off the shelf and saying, “oh, there is a nice cookbook, maybe I should get that?”, before finally darting out the front door, snatching the keys from my mother’s hands and declaring that she has to go to find a toilet. We stand there um’ing and ah’ing about where the closest toilet might be, when she screams that she hasn’t got time for decisions, piles into the car and drives off without us.
My mother and I decide to walk up to the local shops while she is gone so I call The Yang and tell him where we will be and he responds, in true form, by asking, “so where will you be?”. I start growling and hissing into the phone, causing Mum to try and pick up the pace and create some distance from me, but only succeeding in giving herself an asthma attack.
My sisters then calls, calm and composed after toilet expedition, to find out where she should come and collect us from. In this time The Boy and The Yang have returned in a whirlwind of mayhem, which is, naturally, the moment my mother chooses to thrust her phone at The Yang, who is desperately trying to stop The Boy from throwing himself at passing cars, and asks him to fix the ring tone. The Yang stares at her in disbelief, but in trademark calm and politeness (he was ‘married’ into this clan, not breed by it remember) asks if he can do it later, before dashing off after The Boy who has just tried to see if he can fit beneath a car backing out of a driveway.
My mother and I hurry after him towards where my sister has now turned up with the car when my Mother starts frantically searching through her bag before loudly declaring that she has “lost the fucking keys” – yep, the ones that my sister has just used to drive the very car sitting right before us.
Back in the car and heading home there is a long, slow, collective exhale that the outing is finally coming to a close, broken only when my mother says, “well, that was relaxing, we should really do it more often….”
As i sit here reading this in my shiny gold Hugh Hefner/Playboy dressing gown, i can understand what your mother obviously knows – what a great edge of high drama a good dressing gown (or disrobing) can add to proceedings…
Hilarious as usual. Bravo!
What a wonderful image of you in your shiny golden gown JJ! Of course I can rely on you to appreciate the scene of high drama, and of course, high fashion
THank you!
This is a horror story, right? If you could bottle awkward and sell it, I think you would have a thriving business.
Having raised two kids to college age, I have forgotten how much logistical crap I had to deal with in even doing a sample trip to the market.
Hang in there darling!! 😉
Haha, yeah the horror story of my family life! I can’t believe you cant remember the *fun* of those young family times just like it was yesterday?!
Trust me when I say I’m hanging FJ, I’m hanging – thank you!
This is why my sister and I live on different continents – different hemispheres, too.
Yes, I’m beginning to sense that a few hours drive from my sister and in the SAME HOUSE as my folks may not be quiet far enough…..
Thanks Kyknoord
Oh god. I’ve had that day. I’m surprised you’ve not locked yourself in a cupboard with a cask of port. Made me laugh though…
A cask of port or a case of double proof rum?! I think I would need the latter to sufficiently ‘recover’!
Thanks Twitchy Fingers!
I feel your pain, RTW. Though I must admit I’m somewhat fascinated by the fact that your mother said the word “fucking”.
For some reason I always thought that when I became an adult, my Mom and I would be able to swear together.
So not the case…
Haha, it is only in times of true pain and frustration that I hear the F word outburst from her, i.e, all the fucking time!
(ok, thats not true, I mean, I don’t want to make her sound like some trashy gutter mouth – our family’s reputation of saintly sanity is at stake here!)
Thanks Bschooled – maybe you will get to share some outbursts of profanity with your Ma if you attempt to change her ‘Christian Rock’ dial on her car stereo when you are next cruising around together…?!
hahaha … the family that swears together causes a scene together … that’s how it is with mine anyway! Brilliant as usual. I am curious as to the lack of ‘babychino’. This would never happen in Melbourne!
Oh thanks Kirsty! Love that expression you coined, it is certainly true in the case of my family too!
And yeah, Melbourne, we all know its way cooler down there, too bad that’s ‘cooler’ in every sense of the word
hahaha touche !!!!
I could read about your family dysfunctions all day Ruby. I’m sorry to laugh at your misfortune but I did. Repeatedly. I think that your major characters and the roles that they played hit a resonant tone with all of us. You brought back memories of my own mother to a fucking T.
“Tensions continue to run high, this time over the all important discussion on whether or not we need order at the counter, or if they will come to our table.” This argument could ONLY be had with family members, especially of the older vintage.
And why the hell would a coffee shop not have a bathroom? That’s just crazy.
You nailed this one Ruby; hit it out of the park.
Thanks Scott, really, too kind.
So we have somewhat similar mothers hey, I wonder if yours is a tightly wound, neurotic worry wort that has, amazingly, reproduced the very same traits in her offspring, yet every time said offspring displays such traits, she turns around and says, “I really don’t know where you get that from…”
And on the matter of the missing bathroom, let me say, I KNOW! I couldn’t believe it either and did my own fair share of huffing and puffing at that point….
My mom did Ruby, she passed away years ago. It’s been long enough that I can make fun of her again… she’s laughing somewhere.
Ah, sorry to hear that about your Mum Scott (that she passed away, not that that she is laughing somewhere – that bit sounds good!) It is actually reassuring to know that with time you can enjoy (lovingly) poking fun at her again – I am actually scared to death of losing my folks, even though it is obviously inevitable, and even though they sound like annoying, trashy twats!, the thought of them going is crippling….
That whole clusterfuck is horrifyingly true-to-life. You cannot have an experience like that without being related to most of the principal characters. Without this sort of lifelong bond and clashing habits, it would have just been a pleasant day spent with friends, which however enjoyable that may be, is hardly crippingly funny blog material.
Thanks for the laughs.
Haha, you are right CLT, it has to be family to make it that kind of pain – and yes, there is a wealth of blog material in family life!
“Clusterfuck” is a wonderful word by the way….
[…] for these phenomenally high rates are, apparently, plain old genetics, and growing up in families like this. But of course, living in a world that is batshit crazy, is also thought to have something to do […]
Oh rubytwoshoes, this is the breath of fresh air I needed. My sister, with her hubby, daughter and 4 year old grandson just left yesterday after a weeks vacation at Mom and Dad’s home, just a stones throw from my house. Naturally, when big sis comes home, I want to visit with her. But this time especially, NO WAY did that happen. Dad’s ill and grumpy, Mom doesn’t want to be left out (ok, refuses to be left out), great-nephew has a permanent hold on his grammy and my two grands who live with me (ages 3 & 5) are worse than my Mom. So we all pile over to Mom and Dad’s for Sunday dinner where my Mom procedes to tell my daughter in law about how I’ve never learned anything from her and don’t know anything. My Dad just adds to that. What a wonderful afternoon! Your post just made me laugh that others experience the same crap and my family is just as dysfunctional as everyone else’s!
Haha, its true isn’t it? We all seem to be a different shade of dysfunction! And I know what you mean about how it can be reassuring to know that many of us share somewhat similar experiences. I often forget that and feel I am the only person in the world suffering thru a crazy family – but I know that not only is it not true, but that I am very lucky that it is a lovin’ kind of crazy
Thanks for the visit Catladie
High-larious! I married into a similar circus. We have fewer players (no kids, father-in-law passed on) but your story is still disturbingly familiar.
Thank you Neal, it is heartening to know of similar circus stories out there. I read a funny quote the other day that is apparently from Seinfeld, “there is no such thing as fun for the whole family”. Now thats hilarious, I love it!