staycation

staycation

all the kids

all the kids

Sunday, April 28, 2019

Cut Your Melon the Way You Want

So tonight I found out how boring I'd be if I was in the hotel business.

We had to eat dinner with Sam's parents. Sam is the beautiful kid our kids had become friends with. Sam is a tall, lanky and sweet kid, handsome and shy. The mom thought we should all have dinner together, which would be great if I was watching a movie of it instead of having to actually show up and act like a grown up.

I don't know why being Adult Mom, I'm at my most awkward. It's like my family fits me well when we're in the old van with surfboards on top, heading to the beach in barefeet. I'm at my unconscious best here, where no one is looking at me and I don't have to chop watermelon in a tasteful way. Here's how I know I was cheating myself on this Parent Date. I cut the watermelon the way I NEVER cut the watermelon, in the neat and structured way that I saw Uncle Donny do once. Turn the half melon upside down. Cut the sides off. Cut the pieces symmetrically. Perfect job.

If it was me, I would just cut right into the middle of the watermelon, cut out basic lines in a grid pattern, and then cut huge, uneven chunks right in the watermelon, using it as its own bowl which saves having to clean a bowl. It's messier, but it's the right way to do it, in my barefoot on the beach brain.

I did it the way I'm NOT. I did the whole night that way, because their floor was clean and their books were stacked neatly, and I wanted to be NORMAL for the kids' sake, while she put feta and vinegar on the watermelon that I knew Lilly would now never eat, and she also had tomato and mozzarella salad which I also knew was another LOSER in the book of foods eleven year olds find most repellent.

The family is from Amsterdam, so if it weren't for that, or maybe because of that, we were at cultural odds. They were obviously the cooler ones, they'd spent 4 years in Paris, 4 in Greece, time in NY, in Chicago, and now here, for some reason, in Tujunga, the tweaker capital of the world. Place most conducive for dumping a body. They were the brunette version of my family, kids almost the same age, except they got dogs instead of having the third child we had.

Their house was lacking any holes, it was like living in Ikea. We ate upstairs, outside in this patio they just "built" themselves, this little outdoor 70's den where we ate steaks in matching plates on our laps and I was just praying for it to be over because the dad was like his friendliness was there but coated in an ice block like he'd fallen in while ice fishing, she fished him out, and there wasn't time to thaw before we got there. Frozen in himself, he'd still managed to spend a life globetrotting with his college girlfriend, and two adorable if quiet children, and yet despite all the international flavor they had no stories to tell, their flavor choice was no flavor thank you. Their whole family was like my family on mute. I had a friend like this in my teens, I thought she was so deep because she never spoke until a few years in when I felt like shaking her because she NEVER SPOKE, and eventually I just moved on. I knew I didn't have to do years here, I only had to get past the steak, and keep trying to make conversation. They were interesting in the way that a brand new plastic trash can you're buying at Target is interesting. Exciting, even. A whole big inside, nothing yet has touched it. Whole stretches of their personalities had been obviously prepared, yet not brought down from the attic maybe, ever.

Luckily Barry is good at making conversation where there isn't any, and we talked, boringly for all of us I think, about the kids, because that was why we were there. There's no flamboyance here, nobody spilling their guts or god forbid laughing, or actually enjoying the meal. It was awkward first date where you knew from the moment you turned the melon upside down to cut it the wrong way, that being yourself with people who aren't like you is not a place anyone who wants to digest food easily wants to visit.

They'll be gone in another few years, maybe to Fiji. When their kids are in college they have no plans to stick around and, I don't know, do their laundry when they come home on Christmas break, like I have plans to do. You know, continuing the relationship, for like, ever. They're just going to neatly pack up their superclean shit and unfold it somewhere else and play at being those people for awhile.

I just got a stomach ache from trying to keep my true self inside. As Lilly said in the car on the way over, in the gravest way that good advice can be given when you're 11, "Just don't fart there."