Between films today, Mary and I decided to have supper at one of our favourite Toronto spots, the Queen Mother, where the portions, entrees and dessert, wait staff, and atmosphere are always just right. And there is no question that in the absence of Sarah, life needs to feel as close to just right as it can.
Go ahead and asked me how appalled I was, then, by the mother and one of two children who sat at the table beside us. Disgusted doesn’t even come close to how I was feeling. In fact, I was five inches away from butting in and admonishing mother and son when it occurred to me I would be doing the very thing of which I was accusing them: breaking boundaries.
In my defence, however, let me recreate the scene, albeit by way of paraphrasing.
Son, portly, thirteen going on sixty, pale blue golf shirt that matched his eye colour, metal braces glittering, speaking to mother: “You’re ordering chicken? Why do you do that? You eat the same thing every night.”
Mother, sun glinting off wedding band: [indecipherable]
Daughter, age eleven, also blue-eyed, gossamer lovely, sitting on the periphery, looking lost.
Son, insipidly: “I eat the same dull lunch five days a week, and then I come home to the same boring supper every night – chicken and broccoli. It seems it’s all you know how to make.”
Mother, to son: “Are you comfortable? Would you prefer sitting on this side? Do you have enough wall space [to lean into]?”
Son: “I’m all right. I guess.”
Daughter, looking through window, twirling her hair.
Son, sighing: “Where’s my dinner?”
Later, after their food arrives and mother is eating her chicken and rice, son puts down his noodle spoon, picks up a fork, and without a hint of “Mother, may I?” stabs a piece of mum’s chicken and shoves it into his pudgy mouth.
Mother, speaking to son: “How is your dinner?”
How is your dinner?
I could have got up and smacked the two of them into tomorrow, right through the bevelled Queen Street window out onto the street, two pear-shaped bowling pins rattling toward – and into – the lake.
Why, only today, mere hours before dinner, I heard from a reliable source that neo-Nazism is on the rise in this culture. [I have since checked current activity on the Internet, and am shocked.]
There was a time in my life when I might have guffawed at the notion, yet when I look around me and listen, when I see how many boundaries are being broken on every side of every familial fence, I wouldn’t be surprised to wake up tomorrow morning and find a string of porky, pith-helmeted soldiers goose-stepping by my window.
Say what you want about my parent’s and my generation. Think what you will of yes please and no thank you and chewing with your mouth closed and appreciating where that meal comes from and who paid for it.
And say what you will of adults who at least attempt to parent by finding some sort of balance between imperialism and obsequiousness – all of which is infinitely more hopeful than where we seem to be headed today: mothers and fathers too lazy or afraid to parent, their children too dulled, ruined by an insatiability fostered by parents who are too lazy and afraid...and so on.
The only thing that stopped me from hissing at mother and son as I walked out of the restaurant was a large framed portrait of the Queen Mother hanging high on an upper wall, her apple-shaped cheek in three-quarter pose reminiscent of my mother, whose gently admonishing words I could hear whispering in my ear, “Darling, do unto others....”
Well, yes, I suppose.
Meanwhile, if you spy this mother and son in a restaurant near you, feel free to smack them in the back of the head for me. Hard. Just don’t tell my mother.
