23 November 2017
Trigger – a phrase: Well, we’ll leave you here then, no point traipsing out to the platform. Platform farewells are dreadful. Good luck! She made her way to the ticket office and bought a 3rd class single to Norminster Station. She turned and they had gone.
Ghosts of Thanksgivings past
It had been one of those obligatory visits home. Home where family and childhood friends remained. They remained not only in place, but also in time. It had been several years since her last visit. Please come, you know everyone wants to see you. We miss you so. We can talk about the good old times we had.
That was the problem she thought as she sat on the train just before arriving at Farnsworth station. The times were old but not particularly good from her perspective. And all they did was talk. Why is it with people who have so little to talk about, they spend so much time saying it. She could name the topics, they never changed no matter who it was doing the talking.
First it would be grandchildren and how bright the little darlings were, despite the failings of the son/daughter in law. Thankfully their own progeny was single handedly able to overcome having married down, so to speak, and was all that was keeping their little prince or princess from becoming a monster. And there, in the corner would be the would be genius, torturing the cat, or beating up on the other little darling brought along by some other talker.
Of course that would then lead to a conversation, soto voce, about how the failed partner had blown through all their money and lost three jobs because everyone was against them. And if it hadn’t been for their own child, the family would have long been out on the street. And how the long suffering daughter/son worked two jobs so that the little dear could attend the best school in the town. Evidenced by the little ones inability to put square pegs in the square holes, it was money being wasted.
Then it would be on to the neighbors. Not how it was in the old days, when people helped each other and kept to themselves. Kept up the gardens and never made noise. None of this parking of cars everywhere and starting engines at all hours. And the language and the drinking outside. Such a terrible image for my little ones. It was always the fault of someone else. Their fine child had to endure that neighborhood of course due to the partners inadequacies, and we loop back to that line of talk again.
If you were lucky, politics would be avoided, but you rarely were. Actually if all those foreign influences had stayed foreign, our country would not have gone down the tubes. Blame it on the politicians of course. Not a single one of them with a brain or a backbone to stand up for our good old values. They are all bought and paid for by the rich or the corporations anyway so why bother to vote. You used to be able to count on your local leader to solve problems. Now they don’t want to listen. And when they do manage to give you two minutes, what you hear back is meaningless. “We are striving to ensure that the citizenry receives the utmost consideration given the lack of resources and the demands place upon us by the central government. Meaning, “ I have a lunch date at the club with the CEO of the corporation we just gave a big tax reduction to in order to keep them from moving 10 jobs to the next town. So Bugger Off! ”
Depending on the number of men in the room, sports would soon take over. Its a shame, it would go, that nobody can afford to go to the games anymore. Do you know the cost of a beer and a burger? Why we used to cook a meal for the entire family for less than that. And half the good seats are empty because they are all bought up by the corporations who give them away to client strangers who don’t even like the game, let alone support the home town boys. And don’t get me started on the greedy players. They move around all the time at the slightest whiff of an extra bob or two from another club. Whatever happened to playing for the love of the game and the home town fans? Disgraceful. And the slightest little bruise; they fall down crying to the ref that they have been mortally fouled and then sit out the next month doing “rehab” – on full pay of course. In the old days our guys would run out there on one leg and give it a go and then make the winning goal as they were falling and breaking the other leg. Ah the players just aren’t like they used to be. Those were real men.
Meanwhile the noise level would have been elevated to jet engine decibels along with the alcohol consumption. None of these wimpy wine sippers in our family of course. We drink real drinks. And what’s the purpose of drinking at all if you don’t get a good nose on. Hey, its all good fun. We can handle it. And to think you’re not even supposed to drive home if you’ve had more than one drink an hour. And the joke would be, “Well, I guess I’ll just have to stay here for the night cause I already have 12 hours to go.”
Finally, it would be time for the dinner for those men who could still stumble their way to the table. The women of course had been in the kitchen for the last 3 hours, sipping the lemencello that was supposed to have gone into the citrus sorbet. Just getting the taste right of course. And the food would be brought to the table after being reheated from the oven. Nothing made fresh anymore, all take out from the local supermarket. Warmed over turkey, canned peas and corn, packaged buns, and potatoes, lots of potatoes, oven baked. fries with enough grease that would stop the squeaks on a semi trailer truck, mashed, sweet, garliced with onions. Lots of potatoes. All thrown down on the table by the women who then jumped out of the way as the little monsters roamed in and took what they wanted before heading back into the salon to sit in front of the telly and use the food as weapons to throw at the cat. The men scraped the sauce off the meat and had some of each type of potato. None of the canned veg would be touched. The women mostly nibbled, and had bowl after bowl of the citrus sorbet. That fourth bottle of Lemoncello really did make it perfect.
Now you were captured, sitting between dear old loopy Aunt Nora and your sister’s failure of a son in law who tried to get you to invest in his latest money losing scheme. No matter how hard you try to give attention to Aunt Nora’s recollection of going to the beach with her friends from school and smoking her first cigarette and kissing boys behind the bath house, the son in law never stopped touting his idea for setting up an industrial fish smoker in the garden. If only he had the capital available from someone from the city…meaning you.
Then Uncle Steven would take center stage, rambling on about how the young just don’t have any respect any more for anything or anyone. In my day, he would say, we would just take them out behind the garage and give them a good whipping. That’s what this generation needs, someone to tell them what’s what. He never did say what the what was.
Finally the desserts would hit the table. The kids would run back in and take handfuls of each. The men would talk about their favorite desserts, none of which seemed to be on the table. And the women, would have more citrus sorbet. They did not want to ruin their palate, or their figures, with sweets.
Then it was time for the men to get up and go in to watch sports on the telly and have an after dinner drink, which was usually the same as the before and during dinner drink. The women returned to the kitchen to do the dishes and finish the citrus sorbet. It really cleans the palate don’t you know.
Thankfully, finally, it would be time to go back to the station and return home, to your home. Your sister and her failed son in law and daughter, with the three kids insisted on driving you back to the station. And you pile into their van with the kid surrounding you, putting their dessert sticky hands all over you, and the son in law doing the driving while looking back at you and asking when you might be able to join in his enterprise. They troop out of the van as you get to the station door.
Then, finally, you get to talk. Your favorite words of the day since going “ back home”. “Well, I’ll leave your here then, no point of traipsing out to the platform. Platform farewells are dreadful. Good luck.”
And you make you way to the ticket office and buy a 3rd class single to Norminster Station. And when you turn, they have gone. And the weight is lifted and a smile happens and you shout out our own thanks giving homily. “Free at last. Thank God. Thank God. I’m free at last!”