November 12, 2010
Normally, at 9.00 am on a Friday morning, between the months of September and April, I am standing in front of my Introduction to Criminology class; a room brimming with bright eyed students, keen to learn about the critical examination of criminology.
Not this morning though.
Ten years of teaching has taught me that if the university is closed on Thursday and open on Friday, the likelihood of students putting their bums in the seats of my intro class decreases significantly.
However, don't fear.
They didn't get the class off.
They're just not in the physical classroom space.
And I am here.
I wanted to go to the library, but, recent trauma has prevented me from being there.
And what would be that trauma?
A family dinner.
As I have become older, I have come to the conclusion that family dinners are very stressful.
Not so much those family dinner that occur at my house.
But those family dinners that occur in public.
Like Swiss Chalet.
Last night.
When my father suggested that we take Mum out for dinner, I was fine with that, but I was also a little wary.
I agreed to fetch my mother from the nursing home, because my car allows me to put the wheelchair in the back of the car without disassembling the wheelchair, a confusing and labourious process.
But in my life, it isn't as simple as getting Mum and going for dinner.
In my life, it means getting Stephen to move himself along quickly enough to get be ready on time, moving Em forward to ensure that she is ready for work, uniform on, work-approved shoes on her feet, Empire hat covering her head, and making sure that the very sick Pookie was going to be alright for a little bit on his own, with the dogs.
And then picking up Mum and dropping off Em and picking up Mer, who was sitting on the front steps of the theater entrance, waiting for me to take her along to dinner with us.
Easy right?
Wrong.
Meaning that we arrived at Swiss Chalet at 4.20.
My father arrived at Swiss Chalet at 3.50.
For 30 minutes he waited in his car.
Rather than going into the resturant and getting a table.
So by the time we arrived, he was already crabby.
Instead of the usual, "Hi! How are you." we were greeted with,
"There were 6 cars in the parking lot when I got here."
Okay.
I get it.
You were here and we weren't.
And the additional 14 cars in the parking lot of a restaurant that seats 150 people didn't seem to me to be an issue, given that I was late because I was running all over the city picking people up and dropping them off, while all my father had to do was get himself in the car and get to the restaurant.
But I knew what awaited me for the remainder of the meal.
Everything that would go wrong would be blamed on the fact that he sat in the parking lot for 30 minutes.
Because I wasn't there when he thought I should be.
In spite of the fact that I told him I wasn't getting Mum until 4.00.
Communication.
How come it is so hard to communicate with my father?
And this event set the stage for the remainder of the meal.
A convergence of events that were completely and utterly beyond my control.
I knew that.
Everyone in the restaurant knew that.
Except my father.
A take out order of proportions hitherto never witnessed before at a Swiss Chalet outlet in the entire Western world resulted in an absence of white meat chicken.
Until more white chicken could be procured.
This upset a number of people; in fact a family sitting across the aisle from us left because they were not sympathetic to the plight of the kitchen staff.
No white meat and a dining room full of customers.
And to add to this already toxic concoction of stress and agitation, in an effort to ensure cost saving, the management of Swiss Chalet deduced that yesterday was considered a "stat" holiday in the work world, meaning time and a half, or double time, which meant that if they reduced the number of staff on a day where they weren't anticipating a large number of customers, they wouldn't have to pay an increased staff wage for the day.
This might have worked if the restaurant hadn't been overflowing with diners, to the point where they were lined up outside the restaurant.
I don't know how the management of Swiss Chalet could come to such a faux pas conclusion, because I have never been at Swiss Chalet when the dining room wasn't full.
Unless I was there at 3.00 in the afternoon.
So, just to keep everyone on the same page, I was late, there was no white meat chicken, the restaurant was understaffed, and I was there with my parents, Stephen and Meredyth.
We order.
My mother has spent the last year in the nursing home being fed three times a day, at the same time, each and everyday.
Meaning that when she is off her routine, she becomes agitated.
10 minutes after we order, our drinks arrive.
Wine for Mer and Stephen, tea for Dad, coffee for Mum, Diet Pepsi for me.
I doctor Mum's coffee, one cream, and pass it to her.
As soon as the cup touched her lips, she made a scrunchy face, and pronouced the coffee, "stone cold, and I can't drink it."
Translation: Dawne, I need you to get me another cup of coffee.
So, in a restaurant, teeming with diners waiting for white chicken, I track down our patient, harried, stressed waitress and ask if she could put my mother's coffee in the microwave and warm it up.
She makes my mother a whole new pot of coffee.
Meanwhile, my father, who ordered tea, has finished his first "pot" and begins the opening and closing of the lid which, I think, was supposed to signal our harried waitress to the fact that he wanted more hot water.
And in the din of dining room, the minute clanging of the pot lid to the pot rim wasn't being heard.
Except by our table.
I asked him what was wrong.
"I want more hot water", he replied, "there isn't enough in this little pot."
Eventually, he captures our waitress while she is practically running by, and requests more hot water.
And then remarks that none of this would have been a problem at 3.50 when there were six cars in the parking lot.
We sit there a little bit more, while Mer regales my 70+ parents with tales of Tim and his wonky knee.
She said something about how hard it was for him to walk when he got up this morning.
She is sitting beside my father.
He asks if they are living together.
She and I reply, at the same time, with a vehement, "NO!"
Which lead him to ask if they weren't living together how does she know what his knee feels like in the morning?
At this point, I just wanted to crawl under the table with a bottle of brandy clutched in my hand, rocking back and forth muttering, "this will end soon" to myself over and over again.
We wait a bit longer, when my father stops our waitress again to ask how come things were taking so long.
And this is when we hear the saga of the white meat chicken, and the massive take out order.
She leaves, and my father remarks that he doesn't know how come people insist in white meat chicken.
He then asks me if I know the difference between white meat and dark meat.
What he was really trying to tell me was that if Stephen and I hadn't insisted on white meat chicken, we'd be eating by now.
I simply replied that I had been on Simply for Life regime for two week already, lost 9 pounds and wasn't going eat anything but white meat chicken.
Because I was already giving up the glorious, Swiss Chalet fries with ketchup and tangy sauce, so I wasn't budging on the white meat chicken.
Which resulted in another, none of this would have been a problem at 3.50 when there were six cars in the parking lot.
And that is when I snapped.
I looked my father right in the eye and reminded him that I had already apologized for not being there when he was, and that I was running all over Fredericton picking people up and taking them to work and that I wasn't apologizing again, that what was happening in the restaurant wasn't my fault and I didn't want to hear anything more about the six cars in the parking lot when he arrived, by himself, free of any running around except after himself.
Peace reigned for about 10 minutes.
Next up, my mother turns to me and reminds me that she has taken her pills.
I knew where this was going.
She wanted to eat because it encourages her body's absorption of her meds.
But there wasn't anything I could do about it.
She seemed resigned to this, and things were good for a few minutes, until she said to me,
"I told Bonnie I would be back by 6.00. I won't get back for then. I need you to call her and tell her I'll be late."
My father jumps in and tells her that they won't be looking for her at 6.00, that they just want her to enjoy herself while she's out.
Now that was definitely not going to work with my mother.
And it didn't.
Which lead to me, outside the restaurant, on Mer's cell phone calling the nursing home trying to track down the nurse working my mother's wing at a time when the nursing home is engaged in the controlled daily chaos known as dinner.
I managed, after calling two times, to get the right extension for the nurses station, which lead me to Bonnie.
I explained to her my mother's concern.
She said that she was on until 11.00 pm. Mum shouldn't worry, she should enjoy herself and get back whenever she gets back.
I get back to the table to reassure my mother that they're not going to withhold her pills if she isn't back by 6.00 on the dot to the most glorious scence.
Dinner had arrived.
This meant that for the next few minutes, at least, things should be calm while everyone ate their meals.
And it was.
Sort of.
My mother was having difficulty cutting the broccoli in her chicken stir-fry. I cut it for her, with my father's background commentary,
"You can't cut it Janet because the knives have no edge."
Which was supported by Mer, who chimes in,
"I know. Whenever you serve meat, a special knive that will actually cut the meat is supposed to come with the meal."
More eating.
Less conversation.
Until my father reaches the end of his dark meat chicken.
And the bone was somewhat red.
Leading him to conclude that the very end of his chicken was raw, because they were so rushed in the kitchen that they were plating raw food just to get it out.
So, after eating 90% of his chicken and 100% of his meal, he calls over our harried, stressed and wonderful waitress and tells her that his chicken was raw.
She then calls the manager, who replies that the chicken was cooked the way it was always cooked but she would take the meal off his bill.
So he got his meal for free.
I was paying for me, Stephen and Em.
Leaving Dad to pay for Mum's meal.
Paying for the meal is stressful in an of itself.
I paid, and left the waitress a generous tip for all she had put up with from our table.
Then my dad paid.
The debit machine wasn't chip compatible.
My dad isn't debit machine compatible.
The first try came back incomplete.
Mer was beside him so she assisted him with which buttons needed to be pressed.
And then it came time for the tip.
He looks at me, while the waitress is standing there, and says, "You took care of the tip, right."
Well, yeah. For me, Stephen and Mer.
So, the man who got his meal free didn't tip the waitress, who stood there the entire time.
Tipping has been a battle between my father and I for a long time.
He once tipped $5.00 on a $100.00 meal bill.
And that was only after I said he simply couldn't leave a toonie.
And when he wasn't looking, I slipped our waitress another $10.00 because that was all I had in my wallet at the time.
After our waitress left, I said taht it was customary, when there was more than one bill, that each bill tips the waitress.
15%
He just waves his hand at me and said he tips a toonie, and he'd do that if I wanted.
I put Mum's coat on and just left.
Sort of.
But what happened between leaving the restaurant and getting into the car, along with the incidents in the car while taking my mother back to the nursing home are not fit for public consumption.
At least not right now.
The emotional and mental scarring has to fade first.
Let's just say that I was so upset about this family dinner that I *almost* didn't go to a movie last night with my husband.
Almost.
But we had planned on seeing RED and Stephen wasn't letting me get out of it, so off we went.
Going to the movie was good.
I relaxed.
Laughed.
Enjoyed myself enough that I was able to come home and actually sleep fitfully until 8.45 this morning.
I didn't remember to set the alarm.
Meaning Em is now very late for school.
Somehow she doesn't seem to upset.
She worked last night and came home with us, around 11.30.
But equilibrium will be restored when this afternoon I find myself at the Community Kitchen.
Because nothing pulls you out of your own self pity by seeing those who are struggling with real hardships.
And not those caused by routinized aging parents.
Title Lyric: Lunch or Dinner by Sunshine Anderson
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