It’s a blessing and a joy to have children. Ask my mother. Just joking: think of that as an early April Fool or a little Pesach shtick from me.
Our plan was to all go to Israel together this Passover but we all know how the saying about “Pesach, plans, and power-mad ayatollahs” goes. Unpeacefully. Sure enough, our flights to Tel Aviv got cancelled so we decided instead to have a lovely big family meal together at my house. All together. Myself, my poor, long-suffering, bewildered goyfriend, and my five kids. And my parents. Nachas, no?
The fire was lit, cat-litter tray freshly cleaned, clutter cleared and the children were all as pleasingly acceptable as young adult offspring are able to be: present, awake and dressed. My goyfriend kindly fetched my parents over in his car and I prepared the big lunch. Admittedly, I had been overambitious and underestimated how much time I needed, even with the kids mucking in here and there, to prepare a magnificent kosher feast acceptable to both my fussy parents, but, hey, only by two or three hours. And the family chilling out together – joshing before the noshing – a golden time, no?
No.
One: What, my mother demands to know (several times), were she and my father supposed to be doing while they were waiting for the lunch?
Two: Why had I sent the goyfriend so early if we weren’t ready to eat?
Three: How much sitting could she do?
The answers:
One: Maybe talk to your grandchildren. The same ones you always say you never see enough of.
Two: We thought it might be nice to hang out together – “schmoozing the breeze”.
Three: Basically the same as you do at home.
Frantically I speed up my prep, calling out that everything would be ready in 20 minutes. “Another 20 minutes?” my mother says, appalled, “Misha, your father wants to know where he can go out and buy a bread roll.” (My father looks a bit surprised at this assertion). “He’s hungry.”
“Why would you want to send a 92-year-old man off walking to a bakery when we obviously have bread in the house?” I ask, “and when there are small nibbles on the table and we’re about to eat?”
I give my dad a mezonot roll – his favourite – and get everyone to sit around the table for the (over)long-awaited family feed.
Not sure if it’s my cooking but after three mouthfuls my parents refuse to eat more and my mother wants to sit by the fire again. But only for three minutes. After those long three minutes she wants to be taken home: we persuade her to stay awhile so we can have some post-lunch mellow Mansoor time.
Obligingly, one of my boys gets out his guitar and asks my mum what she would like him to play. “Whatever you want”, she tells him, so he plays Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and everyone but my parents sings along heartily. With feeling. Just as I think we are getting to a beautiful crescendo of harmonies – all my children have lovely voices – my mother cuts in loudly with “Are you ready to take me home yet?” with even more feeling. “But aren’t we having a nice time?” I ask her. “Yes, yes, of course we are, she says, but it’s your father. He wants to go home. He’s suffering.”
I look over at my father who’s in the comfy armchair. He’s nodding away, emitting occasional, gentle little snores in his sleep. He looks content and far from suffering. Maybe I can’t see it. I scrutinise his face more deeply, searching for pain. If anything, there’s a half-smile hovering. He likes the children around him.
I ask my mum what she means by “he wants to go home”, seeing as he’s asleep. “He told me,” my mother insists. “Did he communicate this with the power of his mind?” I ask.
Then I tell my mother about the brilliant film I saw at Dolphin Reef in Eilat. There were two giant whales, humpbacks, I think, and they pair up – a male and female – curling up in a sort of yin/yang circle, in silence for months, barely moving, no sounds, no action, no nothing.
Marine biologists have been observing them for years, puzzled. It is now believed that the two whales are communicating on a level we have yet to understand and that it may be a mating ritual or perhaps a way of bonding either prior to their first sexual act or as post-coital togetherness.
Either way, they are able to communicate with one another in a way we cannot see or hear.
I explain this all to my mother, enthusiastically, and I ask her if that is now what is going on between my father and her.
“Misha, it has been very nice but I have suffered enough,” my mum replies.
As I said, having children is a joy. And, as they also say, “Next year in Jerusalem.”
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