old english ladies
This weekend everyone on my program went on a two-night homestay in the English countryside. They took my group out to Herne Bay, a little town on the coast, about 20 minutes away from Canterbury. I was paired up with another boy named Michael -- a hugely tall, fat boy with braces. We stayed with a woman named Pat Millard, who is 66 years old, short, and fat, her husband, who has had a stroke and is incapable of doing anything except watching horror movies on TV, and her grandaughter, a four-year-old half-Thai girl named Pim.
It was fairly crazy. First of all, Pat wouldn't stop making fun of Michael's size, right from the beginning -- "alright now loves, let's hop in the car -- if you can fit, that is, Michael." When we got in the house, she gave us dinner, telling me "not to eat any more than I want to" and telling Michael "to be sure and tell her if he wants seconds or thirds." After dinner, she offers Michael an ice cream 3 separate times, and really pushes it, too -- "are you sure? we've got nice little cones to put them in. it'd be really delicious." and does not offer me icecream even once. and I wanted a goddamn icecream, too!
after dinner she sat around and talked to us for a long time, about her family (she has 4 children and 11 grandchildren), her background (Irish), her struggles with diets (she's a 'short fat dumpling' and she knows it, but she's never been able to stick to one), her thoughts about immigration (she likes the Poles, because they're always so Polish, and hardworking). One of her sons married a Chilean woman, one of them married a Thai woman, and her daughter married an American and lives in California.
The next day she fed us a huge breakfast, sent us off for the day, and picked us up in the evening. We played with Pim, ate dinner, and then sat around and watched TV and talked more to Pat. She made some fairly hilarious off-color comments:
Pat, on looking at one of Pim's toys: "Well, now, that IS clever! I bet an Oriental must have made that."
Pim: Can I have dinner now?
Pat: Say please, Pim.
Pim: Why?
Pat: Because it's not polite! For god's sake, we're not Germans!
She also was unbelievably open about her family. She's been married to her husband for 40 odd years -- "too long." She told us in great depth about her third son's marital problems, about the difficulties of dealing with her husband, who she refers to as "old grump" or "old bugger," how she had to quit her job and start taking in students after his stroke, because one night she came home from work and found him wandering around the house naked, crying, wondering where she was. how he doesn't like seeing his grandchildren any more because they overwhelm him, and how her best friend since she was 11 years old turned out to be a "cuckoo in the nest" and she had always known it. She also talked to us about how she wonders what it would be like if the Americans could ever make a movie without guns, and how, based apparently off one of her granddaughter's repulsion to the word "knickers," she feels that Americans are bastardizing the English language and exporting their "tortured" version to the rest of the world.
Anyway, I say this all just to record it somewhere because it was really sort of an experience. The house was cramped and filled with knick knacks and junk and smelled like smoke and had TVs on at all times in almost every room. Pim was a beautiful, incredibly energetic little girl with a terrible cold, who insisted on running into my room and coughing directly on my pillow, who fell in love with me and sat in my lap as much as possible. her father had just had a second child, a newborn baby only a week old -- hence Pim's visit to grandmother's house -- and was calling constantly, so Pat was often on the other room saying "yes well Edward love you've got to tell her that if she's going to change the baby's formula she's got to do it in stages, or of course she'll be put off her food, but it's nothing to worry about" or "well Edward if you can't figure out why she's crying then you're just hopeless, you monkey." And her husband couldn't say anything but a few words, really, but after he had sat in the same room as me while I had been playing with Pim for several hours, he asked if I was staying. I said no, I was leaving that afternoon, and he said "no no --- are you staying forever?" and laughed. I was rather charmed.
And it got me thinking, I guess, about what it would be like to be old. And to quit your job because your husband had a stroke and now can't even talk to you, and needs to be taken care of every minute of every day. Or to be the husband, who feels that he needs to eat alone because he doesn't like other people to watch him eat, and who used to walk down the shore to the bandstand to get a coffee with his friends every single day, but who doesn't anymore because he has trouble ordering a coffee, and the old staff who knew him and knew what he wanted, even if he couldn't say it, have all moved on, and the dog he used to walk down there every day died two years ago.
Anyway. All very odd. It was nice, I suppose. Definitely an experience. And I got to eat some delicioso steak pie.
It was fairly crazy. First of all, Pat wouldn't stop making fun of Michael's size, right from the beginning -- "alright now loves, let's hop in the car -- if you can fit, that is, Michael." When we got in the house, she gave us dinner, telling me "not to eat any more than I want to" and telling Michael "to be sure and tell her if he wants seconds or thirds." After dinner, she offers Michael an ice cream 3 separate times, and really pushes it, too -- "are you sure? we've got nice little cones to put them in. it'd be really delicious." and does not offer me icecream even once. and I wanted a goddamn icecream, too!
after dinner she sat around and talked to us for a long time, about her family (she has 4 children and 11 grandchildren), her background (Irish), her struggles with diets (she's a 'short fat dumpling' and she knows it, but she's never been able to stick to one), her thoughts about immigration (she likes the Poles, because they're always so Polish, and hardworking). One of her sons married a Chilean woman, one of them married a Thai woman, and her daughter married an American and lives in California.
The next day she fed us a huge breakfast, sent us off for the day, and picked us up in the evening. We played with Pim, ate dinner, and then sat around and watched TV and talked more to Pat. She made some fairly hilarious off-color comments:
Pat, on looking at one of Pim's toys: "Well, now, that IS clever! I bet an Oriental must have made that."
Pim: Can I have dinner now?
Pat: Say please, Pim.
Pim: Why?
Pat: Because it's not polite! For god's sake, we're not Germans!
She also was unbelievably open about her family. She's been married to her husband for 40 odd years -- "too long." She told us in great depth about her third son's marital problems, about the difficulties of dealing with her husband, who she refers to as "old grump" or "old bugger," how she had to quit her job and start taking in students after his stroke, because one night she came home from work and found him wandering around the house naked, crying, wondering where she was. how he doesn't like seeing his grandchildren any more because they overwhelm him, and how her best friend since she was 11 years old turned out to be a "cuckoo in the nest" and she had always known it. She also talked to us about how she wonders what it would be like if the Americans could ever make a movie without guns, and how, based apparently off one of her granddaughter's repulsion to the word "knickers," she feels that Americans are bastardizing the English language and exporting their "tortured" version to the rest of the world.
Anyway, I say this all just to record it somewhere because it was really sort of an experience. The house was cramped and filled with knick knacks and junk and smelled like smoke and had TVs on at all times in almost every room. Pim was a beautiful, incredibly energetic little girl with a terrible cold, who insisted on running into my room and coughing directly on my pillow, who fell in love with me and sat in my lap as much as possible. her father had just had a second child, a newborn baby only a week old -- hence Pim's visit to grandmother's house -- and was calling constantly, so Pat was often on the other room saying "yes well Edward love you've got to tell her that if she's going to change the baby's formula she's got to do it in stages, or of course she'll be put off her food, but it's nothing to worry about" or "well Edward if you can't figure out why she's crying then you're just hopeless, you monkey." And her husband couldn't say anything but a few words, really, but after he had sat in the same room as me while I had been playing with Pim for several hours, he asked if I was staying. I said no, I was leaving that afternoon, and he said "no no --- are you staying forever?" and laughed. I was rather charmed.
And it got me thinking, I guess, about what it would be like to be old. And to quit your job because your husband had a stroke and now can't even talk to you, and needs to be taken care of every minute of every day. Or to be the husband, who feels that he needs to eat alone because he doesn't like other people to watch him eat, and who used to walk down the shore to the bandstand to get a coffee with his friends every single day, but who doesn't anymore because he has trouble ordering a coffee, and the old staff who knew him and knew what he wanted, even if he couldn't say it, have all moved on, and the dog he used to walk down there every day died two years ago.
Anyway. All very odd. It was nice, I suppose. Definitely an experience. And I got to eat some delicioso steak pie.