Coffee Helps

Sunday lunch with the Parental Unit.

Mum is giving off about the amount of time Dad has spent watching Kylie Minogue on TV over the holidays. “Every time I walk into the room, there she is in another silly wee skirt and your father singing “”I just can’t get you out of my head” with a big silly grin on his face. It’s ridiculous. He’s 55 this year, you know!”. I gently remind Mum about the Bon Jovi DVD she got for Christmas, at one part of which she said “Oooohhh, now, you see… that’s the stuff…”, and she looks uncomfortable. “It’s not the same thing -” she begins, but is interrupted by Dad coming home from the pub.

“Hello, family!” he says merrily. Sister and I look at him, stricken.

“Where is your hair?!” we cry in perfect unison. Dad does a little twirly pose thing, which only serves to show us that it’s worse from the back than from the front. We look at him, our expressions demanding an explanation for the fact that he has a skinhead at the top and neatly groomed hair around the back and sides. “Your mother tried the clippers I got for Christmas,” he says cheerfully. He doesn’t seem too emotionally damaged by this. We turn to Mum for consolation, but she is smiling proudly at her handiwork. “It was quite tricky at first,” she explains, “but I got the hang of it after a while. I think it looks alright… but I might have taken a bit too much off the top, what do you think?”. She looks expectantly at us. I can’t look Sister in the eye. “Errr…” I splutter. “Errr….” splutters Sister.

To make things worse, Sister has previously asked Mum to trim her hair while she’s there, and obviously cannot back out now without appearing critical and ungrateful. And so it is that after dinner, as I am washing the dishes, I see them trooping into the back porch with scissors. I listen, half-sympathetic, half-entertained, to the snippets of conversation that float into the kitchen. By the time I hear Sister saying “Maybe you should just shave it all off and start again,” I am in pieces. There is a thoughtful pause.

“You know,” says Mum eventually, “I think it’s worse at this side than on that side.”

Tears of mirth roll silently down my face.

Never a dull moment at the Parents’ house.