Essays from the Edge

A random collection of ponderings, wonderings and ramblings

Quiet Monday Evening in Seattle Coffee Shop* Saturday, 13 June 2009

Filed under: Uncategorized — Cecilia @ 18:23

We had managed to score the couch. Scoring the couch at Seattle is a rarity, but somehow tonight was our night and that couch was ours. M had bought two books and was eager to start reading one, while I was happy to just sit there in silence with my tall almond-flavoured cappuccino. But M handed one of her books to me to read, and before long we were both holding a book in one hand and a coffee in another, lost in other worlds.

But I was distracted and didn’t feel like reading. I also didn’t feel like getting immersed inside one of M’s books, only to have to give it back to her at the end of the evening. And I really felt like just sitting there in silence, quietly observing the world and allowing my thoughts to run away with me. And so, eventually, I closed the book she had propped in my lap and I peered at the coffee shop world from behind my coffee mug.

And that’s when I saw them.

At first it looked like father and daughter and daughter’s girl friend. The man seemed to be early forties. Grey hair. Balding. Paunch. Wealthy. Clearly he had also had a tiring Monday and was also keen to just sit somewhere quiet and drift away on a wave of coffee aroma. He really didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the friend that was tagging along nor about her constant jabber and girly giggle. In fact, he looked like he really wanted some silence.

The daughter, on the other hand, was evidently working hard to keep the gathering together. When she was talking to her friend, her body language and eye contact showed that she was trying to involve her father in the conversation and vice versa too. It was only when the friend said “You must be so excited to get married!” followed by (yet another) giggle, and when the daughter kissed her father in a very un-daughterly manner, that I clicked: it is not father, daughter and daughter’s friend – it is a couple, and the girl’s friend.

Suddenly the evening became interesting.

And I watched those two. What on earth would inspire a man like that to want to marry a girl like that? He looked as if he had already been married and had already fathered children. Why go through all that again with a young poppie like her? He looked tired. He looked like he should be sitting at home somewhere with his feet up reading the paper with a sherry in his hand while, every now and then, making small-talk to his teenaged children. Not here with a young bride-to-be.

And I looked at her. What did she see in a man like him? A young doll like her couldn’t possibly have found a grey, balding, bellied man like him attractive, so what’s the story? Their body language didn’t suggest that they were deeply in love and it didn’t look as if she was pregnant, so what was the story? How did they come together and why is it heading towards marriage?

And suddenly, in that moment, I had a bit of a reality check. I have, to date, loved two older men in my life. The one was between 10 and 11 years older than me, the other between 12 and 13 years. Luckily neither ended in marriage (though the one almost did) and maybe it is better that way. Granted, I tend to gravitate more towards older men simply because the men (or boys, rather) that I meet who are my age just simply don’t meet my requirements. They are usually too restless or too placid, too eager to please or too intolerant, too opinionated or lacking any opinion of any kind. Age, from what I’ve seen, tends to mellow men a bit and add some depth to their characters. Before then boys just want to get drunk and have sex. Older men want to savour a good red wine and appreciate that there is a difference between sex and making love.

But could I actually marry an older man?

Probably not.

How could I take a life partner who is almost a generation older than me?
How could I be the wife of someone who remembers hearing about the Challenger disaster over the radio? Or about the breaking down of the Berlin Wall?
And how could I, prematurely, sacrifice the whimsical and fickle nature of youth for more demure behaviour?

I don’t think I could.

So maybe it’s time I gave men my age a break and paid closer attention to them again. After all, I don’t want someone to one day think that my husband, or husband-to-be, is my father.

* This was blog was written offline on 11 June 2008.

 

House’s Daugther Wednesday, 15 October 2008

Filed under: Uncategorized — Cecilia @ 07:41
Tags: ,

This evening I thought for the second time in two days that maybe I should think before I open my big mouth. Just because my father’s nickname is House (after the television series – yes, my dad is a doctor) it doesn’t mean that I have any right to be just as rude and unpleasant under the excuse of “Oh, but it runs in my genes.”

Case Study Number One

I had a bit of an argument with a friend who wants to emigrate to Australia and, eventually, I ended the conversation with something rude like “Yes, go bugger off to Australia. You’ll fit right in amongst the other white trash over there.”

Oops. The friendship still seems to be okay, but I know that my words must have stung quite a bit. Nevertheless, I’m not sorry about what I said. I do believe he is behaving like white trash by wanting to emigrate to (in my opinion) redneck ruffian uncivilised vulgar Australia, but I suspect that I could’ve brought my point across in a less hurtful way.

Case Study Number Two

I attended a course yesterday and one of my least favourite colleagues happened to sit next to me. The attendance register came around, I signed it, and then passed it on to him. He took the clipboard from me and asked “May I use your pen?”
“No,” I firmly responded.
He chuckled and then reached out towards my pen. Somehow he must have thought I was making a joke.
“No,” I said again and moved my hand holding my pen further away from him.
The man was shocked. So was the man sitting on his other side, who then lent him a pen.

Well I’m sorry, but I don’t allow anyone else except me to write with my Mont Blanc. A Mont Blanc is not a Bic that can get passed around the class. Having said that, I wouldn’t even have lent a Bic to the creep who sat next to me.

Case Study Number Three

I ran into a long lost friend in Menlyn last night. He had a girlfriend dangling on his side like some kind of man-bag thing, but eventually he introduced her to me. I greeted her and, pointing to her boyfriend, I said “We were at primary school together.”
The boyfriend quizzically looked at me and uttered “Huh?”
“What do you mean ‘huh’?” I asked him. “We both attended such-and-such.”
“Yes,” he replied, “me and you but not you and my girlfriend.”
“I know,” I sighed, “I wasn’t talking about me and your girlfriend. I was talking about me and you.”
“Oh,” he said. “Sorry, that was kind of stupid of me then.”
“Yes it was stupid,” I answered.

Yes it was stupid??? Sheez – did I HAVE to go and rub it in the poor man’s face in front of his girlfriend? What was I thinking? Where had my manners gone?

Then again – he was being stupid.

Like I said – if my dad’s nickname is House – then surely I have a legitimate excuse for being so unpleasant. I’m convinced this is genetic.