The Dinner Party

It was just one of those typical Danish family dinners, well typical for my husband's family. Maybe you know the ones where the table is laid out with the finest china, linen napkins, the family silver. There are always lit candles and usually a floral arrangement. Everyone is assigned a seat. The least desirable was next to my Italian brother-in-law. His Danish wife always sat at the opposite end of the table. There is alot of planning involved in these dinners and this was no exception. I came to believe it was all about control. Dinner was planned so eveything went smoothly, appetizers and main dishes and desserts are served according to the great dinner party rules. There is even a mid-meal smoke break, or there was back then. Anyway, this was a party celebrating I forget what but I was seated next to you know who, my brother-in-law, Hmmm, I should have known something was cooking besides the food. The food was excellent and we were all talking over each other and getting drunk, well not all of us (as I was the designated driver). But I did have a couple more than my usual. The conversation turned to the war in Bosnia. I was laughing and telling the story about how my nephew, an MD in the Army was assigned duty there but he was to only care for the officers.

He objected to not being able to help the locals or the low-ranking military personnel. I guess I should add here my sisters-in-law son was in Afghanistan at the time and he was pretty high up in the ranks. Well, the story I told was how my nephew related to me how one night they were awakened and summoned to one of the commanding officer's tents. It seemed he had “ahem” got a candle stuck up his rear end and my nephew had to remove it. I thought this was hilarious despite being a rather, ok inappropriate comment. My brother-in-law just sat with his mouth open not believing I was relaying this story at dinner. My excuse now of course for telling the story was that one drink too many I told you about.

 All of a sudden at the far end of the table my proper Danish sister-in-law stands up and starts to make an announcement, in retrospect she reminded me of the son in the Danish film “The Celebration” where everything is going along swell and then he gets tanked and makes a toast to their father about how he molested him or was it his sister, can’t remember. Dinner party went downhill from there.

 I thought at the time it was a little crazy. That shit like that didn’t happen at dinner parties but here I was experiencing it full scale.

My family, by contrast to my husband’s, is made up of a lot of whackos. We have these get togethers where food is flying, speed eating is going on, everyone is up and down, babies crying. Total mayhem. Dinners at our home were not for the meek. My family is seen by and large by some as being uncultured, we never pretended to be anything else. We talk about everything and since most of us politically are on opposing sides dinners were a great time for exciting conversation. I carried these dinner manners along with me throughout my life, people thought the stories of my family were for the most part funny, tragic, silly, but everyone always wanted to hear of my family’s antics. It wasn’t until this dinner party that I realized some people did not want to hear about my family. Quess I should have known better.

So back to the dinner party, my sister-in-law who had that one drink too many decided to stand up and make an announcement. She said she was tired of hearing about my family and a few other things that had obviously festered over the years. She added an adjective before “family” that we were all shocked by. It starts with an F. No-one spoke. To say everyone was uncomfortable was putting it mildly. She was usually very proper.

Thank goodness the dinner was almost over, or it was for me, my husband, deaf in one ear and drunk professed he hadn’t heard anything and didn’t know why we were leaving. Jeez he said what was the big deal. Everyone at the table suddenly became very quiet. No matter how I tried to explain to my husband he just said I was making more out of it than it was. Remember he was drunk and couldn’t hear out of one ear. I think I’ll try that trick.

Well, the next year or so, there were sporadic, occasional meetings I think half- hearted attempts to make things right, but the undercurrent of anger was there. I wish it had never happened but wishing won’t make it so as my mother said. I meditated and had an epiphany. This was a lesson I had to learn, well also my girlfriend told me I should only talk to people with like views as me and it would alleviate this kind of stuff. So I stopped talking about my crazy family, although there were some crazy things that happened that year that I thought were funny. I tried to make polite dinner talk when invited to my husband’s sisters’ home. What I learned this year was I was bored at dinner parties. I had to learn meaningless dinner talk, like how’s the weather. I don’t think I was made for this kind of life.

More importantly, this year I remembered I had assigned my sis-in-law as health care proxy so if I ever became sick and ended up a vegetable, she would pull the plug and not go all sentimental on me. Danes are not sentimental people in my opinion, and I knew she could do it. I started to think maybe after all this she would let me live just to torture me, so I quickly found an attorney and changed that paperwork.

Life goes on, make lemonade out of lemons, there is always light at the end of the tunnel, all things mom would have said.

But the one thing she always ended up saying is, I should have known better.