dinner with *his* family

Plan C’s a funny guy. He always looks so terrific, so ‘manly’ with his broad shoulders in nice crisp shirts, wearing just certain shirts w. certain pants, making sure the belt matches the shoes (which are always stylish, pointy with little tassels – he hates his heavy snow boot-shoes), the socks match the shirt, everything goes with everything ———- and yet, he’s very jumpy and also very tearful a lot of the time.

He was so nervous before last Saturday’s dinner with his sons. I was excited about it: as you may remember, I never got to meet Performer’s children, because they were never told that their parents were getting divorced; and in fact he was planning to lie to them if they all came for Thanksgiving dinner, saying that I was just ‘a friend.’ But my children drew the line at that, and as it turned out I never met them at all, though he met mine.

* * *
Almost from the start, Plan C was eager for me to meet his sons. After our second date, only five days after we met, he had lunch with son 1 and son 1’s girlfriend of long standing, and he started telling them all about me.

‘I never did stay on Annie’s sofa,’ he announced (his original plan); ‘I spent the night at Mimi’s. At 2 a.m. I –‘

‘Dad!’ interrupted son 1; ‘Too Much Information!’

Walking from my apartment to that lunch, Plan C had burst into tears on the sidewalks of New York, because – as he phoned me from his cell to say – ‘I’m not lonely any more!!’ (He was widowed three years ago…)

And so he told son 1 and g/f that he had burst into tears, that he had phoned me on the way to lunch, etc. etc.

* * *

Plan C was ready to introduce me almost immediately, but son 1 wisely said, ‘Dad, wait till you’ve known her a month.’ In the meantime, he had emailed my profile picture to both sons, to his sister, his brother-in-law, a few cousins, and many friends. Plan C lives a very populated life, and he’s constantly in touch with relatives, neighbors, business colleagues, former neighbors, former classmates, his late wife’s former classmates, her mother…I think most of these had received my photo and had politely written back that I was ‘pretty’ or ‘good-looking’ or whatever. Plan C kept forwarding their responses to me. He was like a teenage girl in love for the first time, not a widowed man in late middle age who had been looking for another woman for almost two years.

* * *
As it turned out, the dinner took place 34 days after the night we met.

* * *

So this was a big night for him, last Saturday. He wanted to be early. He was worried that the restaurant would be noisy, because son 1 and g/f liked ‘hot’ places, and if this one was of those, we probably wouldn’t be able to hear one another. But (he kept saying as we walked from the subway) tonight was an important night. This meeting meant a lot to him. He wanted his sons to like me and me to like them. He hoped we would all get along. He had never met son 2’s girl friend and was looking forward to that. He hoped – and so on and so forth for a few hours before the event, actually, but more of the same as we drew closer to the restaurant.

Plan C was like a bride before a first wedding; he was that nervous.

* * *

We got to the restaurant very early; he wanted to be early. He searched the restaurant to make sure neither of his sons was there, and then began looking at his watch.

When it got to be 8:01, he said, ‘They’re late.’

‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘People can get held up in New York. It doesn’t matter.’

‘It’s noisy here,’ he said.

‘Well, as long as we’re not near the music, we’ll be all right.’

Plan C was playing the heavy father, already irritated that his sons weren’t on time, as he had been.

And he was so jumpy!

He kept scanning the restaurant to make sure they hadn’t been invisible in some remote corner of it, then looking at the door to see if one of them was arriving at that moment, then looking at his watch again, then looking at the door again.

I tried to keep smiling, so their first glimpse of me would be of a smiling person….

* * *
Finally son 1 and g/f arrived, and then, before we had begun to follow the host to our table, son 2 and his g/f arrived.

They looked exactly like their pictures, tall, dark and handsome, in somewhat different ways, both pleasant and polite, well-dressed (though I couldn’t tell you now what they were wearing), with attractive g/fs in very different styles: g/f 1 was trendy and sexy, with expertly applied eye makeup, very pretty dangly earrings, and the kind of cleavage-revealing top that exposed the entire length of both boobs but (inevitably….) covered the sides. G/f 2 was lovely and statuesque, with amazing, ample curls and almost no makeup, very sweet-faced and more ‘natural’ looking, in a plain turtleneck sweater. The young women had met before and seemed to get along well.

The sons were in their early 30s, the g/fs in their late 20s.

* * *

Before the dinner, when I thought about the meeting, my thinking was along these lines: Wow. These people are going to be very important to me, though they’re not entirely aware how important. I’ll toast them at their wedding (son 1 is engaged to his g/f). I’ll come down the aisle on Plan C’s arm in a year-and-a-half or whenever they get married. G/f 1’s mother will send me a swatch of fabric from her mother-of-the-bride dress so I don’t wear the same color. Maybe I’ll give her a wedding shower in my apartment. I’m going to be a grandmother to their children. Their children will think of me as a grandmother; I’ll probably babysit for them. If they stay in New York, I could become very important to those children. And if I’m alive in thirty years, I might, at age 91 or so, hobble along on my cane to those grandchildren’s college graduations. I’m going to be very important in their lives…

* * *

Once I met them, no such thoughts came into my head at all.

I was just talking with them as I would with any people that age, and I meet a lot of those. Belinda, the person who suggested I write a blog, is in her late 20s, and her fiancé is 31. Lots of friends I socialize with regularly and people I meet in my work are those ages, and I’m used to talking to them. My main concern was to keep conversing with everyone, not devoting too much attention for too long to any one person. We had lots in common, so conversation was easy.

I was seated between Plan C and son 1, and there was an undercurrent of complaint from Plan C to his son about the noise in the restaurant. Plan C would complain, definitely though not strongly, and son 1 would 1) say, ‘then you pick the restaurant next time,’ and 2) apologize to me. I kept saying (I think this happened three times) that the noise was not a problem, that I had been in much noisier places, and that the food was delicious. Son 1 said, ‘Dad said you liked seafood,’ to explain his choice, and I said, ‘I do. The food is wonderful’ and so forth. Each time this exchange took place, I would turn to son 1 and say, ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s not a problem,’ but I didn’t want to appear to be criticizing Plan C by doing that. It was tricky, so I tried to stay light and then to introduce other subjects of common interest.

But in spite of the noise, or rather, in spite of his mild but persistent complaints, Plan C appeared to be enjoying himself.

* * *
Toward the end of the meal, Plan C attempted to tell a joke.

* * *
Plan C often tells me, accurately, that he has no short-term memory; and that he can’t tell jokes.

He’s right. And he shouldn’t attempt to.

Unfortunately, this was a joke – a really stupid one – that I had told him, and he prefaced his telling with credit to me and a nod in my direction.

I knew at once he was going to mangle it, and I urged him not to tell it.

But Plan C was – at last – feeling relaxed and happy, and he confidently proceeded with the joke.

* * *
It was one I mentioned in a post recently, occasioned by the fact that Plan C’s cat Polly joined us in bed at his house, even sleeping curled up near my pillow while we had sex.

(That detail was, needless to say, not part of the joke.)

The joke was:

Q. Who sleeps with cats?

A. Mrs. Katz. ********** And occasionally Mrs. Nussbaum.

It’s not really all that funny, but if done with the right ethnic accent, the long pause after ‘Mrs. Katz,’while the listeners make the mental shift from ‘cats’ to ‘Katz,’ and then the rising tone on the second syllable of the drawled word ‘occasionally,’ and the confident, chatty articulation of ‘Mrs. Nussbaum,’ as if she were somebody everyone present new – in short, with the right gimmicks, this joke (vintage 1922 or so) can draw laughter from a group of people in their 80s.

It’s that kind of joke.

* * *
When Plan C started in on it, I bent my head down so I couldn’t see him, closed my eyes, and put my hands over my ears.

He continued.

I could hear him beginning: Who does Mrs. Katz sleep with? he asked.

Oh god…where will he go from there? I asked myself. I pushed my hands more forcefully into my ears, but alas I could still hear.

Mr. Katz, he continued, but sometimes also Mrs. Nussbaum.

* * *
I glanced up, my hands still over my ears, to see what the response was.

‘I don’t get it,’ said son 2. ‘What’s so funny about it?’

‘You got the genders mixed up,’ I said to Plan C. ‘And the rest of it.’

Son 1 was looking at him sceptically.

Plan C looked around the table at all the unamused faces and started laughing.

‘You couldn’t have botched it more,’ I said, uncovering my ears, and then I started laughing.

* * *
We all laughed at Plan C, who was enjoying his unsuccess with the joke, and his sons and their g/fs never heard the right version. It was actually funnier mangled….especially if you knew the real joke, which of course only Plan C and I did.

* * *

I had shaken hands with everyone when we met. As we were parting (the young folk were going on to drink somewhere else and, no doubt, to discuss Plan C and me), I wondered what form the goodbyes would take. I decided to take my cues from them. Plan C and his sons had given one another big warm hugs when the sons arrived, and the two sons had hugged one another also. They all gave their dad big hugs on parting, and then son 2 gave me a light embrace and a kiss that was somewhere between an air-kiss and a peck on the cheek, and the other three all did the same.

That’s the way it’s done these days, in this culture. You have to be ready for that, though not press it.

* * *

As we walked back to the subway, Plan C asked me what I thought. Before I could say anything, he started to say something about his sons, and then started crying.

‘That was so important to me!’ he said, and ‘Do you think it went well?’

‘Of course it did!’ I answered. ‘They were wonderful.’

I can’t remember what else Plan C said, but he alternated between choking up and saying how important his sons were to him, how he felt his life should be judged by what they were like, how much he wanted them to like me, how important it was for them to see him with me, and more of the same, all the way from Fifth Avenue to Seventh.

* * *

And then of course there were the follow-ups.

* * *

As of this writing Plan C hadn’t talked to son 1, but he did talk to son 2, who had been closer to his mother than son 1. Son 2’s response was that he and g/f both thought I ‘seemed very nice,’ and that Plan C and I ‘seem very happy’ and he, son 2, was glad that Plan C was happy. He added that of course he had ‘just met’ me and ‘didn’t really know’ me but I seemed ‘nice.’

Son 2 was concerned that Plan C had cried too much. Plan C is going to meet g/f’s parents in a few weeks, and son 2 made him ‘promise not to cry’ on that occasion.

Parents!!

God, how can you make them behave well in public??

Plan C is a challenge in that department, I can see.

* * *
Plan C also asked son 2 if it was hard to see him ‘with someone else,’ and son 2 said, ‘it takes getting used to,’ and he (son 2) ‘had just met’ me, but son 2 thought I ‘seemed very nice,’ but mostly, son 2 said, his dad and I ‘seem very happy’ and he’s glad because ‘that’s what’s important.’

That formulation actually gave me a whole new perspective on the evening.

I had been wondering whether the sons would like me, especially son 2 (his mother’s younger child…), and hoping they would; I was eager to be friendly and warm and a good listener, not a big talker, ready to smile and like them etc.

It hadn’t occurred to me that really, the big issue would not be me but Plan C: I would probably be all right, but of course I was new altogether, and they could not have a previous opinion of me. The shocker would be their Dad, whom they had only seen for all those years (till son 1 was 32, and till son 2 was 2 with their mother. That was Dad – the man with Mom.

To see him, 2.5 years after her death, as the partner of another woman, acting loving and intimate with her, smiling at and touching her, a woman they had never seen before – that would be the radical shift, the challenge to them both.

No other woman will ever be their mother; for them, she can never be replaced.

But in a limited sense, for their father, she can be replaced.

And that must be very hard for the sons – especially son 2 – to realize, to see, and to accept.

* * *

Plan C hasn’t met my children yet. In two weeks he will, and then, sooner or later, his sons will meet my children. And that might make things easier (if, indeed, things are at all ‘hard’, as perhaps they are), because then the sons, especially son 2, will see that his dad has a kind of parallel role for my family; he can see it’s not that I’m a ‘substitute’ for their mother, but that Plan C-and-I, as a couple, bring together two separate and independent families in a very loose but new kind of configuration.

New families constellate around us, loosely, and overlap, still maintaining their original identity but now also parts of other, larger, configurations.

* * *

I never thought of myself as part of such a family – who does, in youth? and who does during the whole jdate business, when you’re fixated on emailing, flirting, meeting, dating, and the rest, which for me meant nail polish, bubble bath, tight sexy clothes, having my hair done all the time, and the rest of it – you don’t think, at that point, about the sociology of families….

* * *

And no doubt Plan C and I take this more seriously than our children do. But maybe they will.

* * *
Not that I want to be sentimental or anything, but after writing me about what son 2 had said, Plan C emailed, ‘I believe that this weekend and in this week to come we are experiencing our own blossoming as a couple.’

* * *

Gosh!

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