a familial feast

Last night we had an ‘Anderson Do’. (The name has been changed to protect the innocent. I’m sure some of us are innocent.) My father gets the whole family together to celebrate birthdays and since there are about 18 of us spanning four generations, that’s quite often. Actually, we clump them together and do 2 or 3 at a time if we can so, counting christmas, I think we have about 11 Anderson Dos a year.

The previous one was at my father’s place for Sunday lunch as they most commonly are. He seemed a bit unsure of himself that day, seemed to feel old, I thought. He asked me to take the lasagne out of the oven for him because he was afraid he might drop it.

Then the next day we all get an email to say he had had a bit of a health scare before we arrived that morning. His left fingers wouldn’t work and his speech was slurred. !! Didn’t tell us at the time because he didn’t want to spoil the party. He has since had tests, of course, and there is no problem but it does indicate a higher than average risk of stroke in the future.

So, one effect of this news is that there are to be no more Anderson Dos at Grampa’s house. Last night it was at my little sister’s. Let’s call her Sibling since, in fact, I do.

The wood fire is going and the house is full of cosiness and warmth. (Kevin McCloud of ‘Grand Designs’ doesn’t like the word cosy. Huh. And yet he built the cosiest ever little straw-bale studio in one show. Maybe it’s not an attractive word to the British. I did feel a lack of crispness to their houses when I was there which is a ‘look’ I would love to achieve here, but, you know, in a different country it just all feels different.) Nephew8 (Sibling’s son) is giving us a demonstration of his prowess on the drums when we arrive. I didn’t even know he’d been learning them, or indeed had any, but he doesn’t mess up right through the reasonably complicated song. I start pouring champagne (sparkling wine) for all takers, everyone of age except Sibling who already has a snifter of red to accompany her food preparation endeavours.

All the women in my family of my generation, which is one sister and two sisters-in-law, are fabulous cooks and love to do it. I am the black sheep. Oh, and so are the men, although they wash a mean dish. Last night was pumpkin soup (YUM. And actually that’s one thing I can cook with reasonable, if infrequent, success.), perfect roast lamb and glossy vegetables for about 13. I can’t even cook a roast for two! There’s always at least one undercooked vegetable to mar the (im)perfection.

Sibling’s daughter, my only niece, 10, has been training in gymnastics at the national level. Faaar out. S.i.l.1 (older brother’s wife) doesn’t approve. I so want to know what Niece’s chances are of being in those olympic selection trials they went to watch last night next time they come around (are you still with me, or do I have to fix that sentence?) but the conversation gets diverted to the ethics of competitive sport. Well, you try directing a 13-way conversation.

Niece10, and nephew10 (my younger brother’s son), tend to flirt at these gatherings, and nephew8 joins in the play and somehow never feels left out. (First nephew wasn’t there so doesn’t enter into the story, and anyway, he’s 27.) This suits us because they can go to another room and squeal their hearts out and we can surge forward with the discussion at hand.

My only brother-in-law, Sibling’s husband, asks S.i.l.2 if he can sit next to her. Everybody laughs. There is an ongoing banter between these two, one (B.i.l.) being right wing and the other being left and happening to work for the ABC, and B.i.l. always wanting a full report on where his (what we last night learnt is now) 9 cents a day is going, and demanding a full account of all work-related travel and dining expenses.

Sibling has always kept her walls covered in pictures and I have noticed a new theme of large stylised nudes. Stylised in a way that strongly appeals to me. I’m a fan of Toulouse-Lautrec a la vibrancy and leaping off the canvas at you, and these nudes had some of that. Focussing from my seat at the table I think I can decipher the signature: ‘Sibling’. Well not literally. Her name, actually.

‘Sibling, what’s with this whole painting thing? Since when have you been an artist?’
‘Since I did a 4 week kind of “Painting 101″ class at the CAE. I love collecting frames from op shops and I wanted to do something with them. So now I take the canvas out and paint over it. I took a few down to the local cafe to see if they would display some of them and they did, but they actually started selling before they had put them on the walls!’ Right out of left field. Who knew there was a successful artist in her? And she’s been working on a novel or two, inspired by her creative writing course at uni. None of us knew she was a creative writer. She always perceived herself to be the (comparatively) dumb one. She has the midas touch, the golden angle on everything, the belief that all will be well, all will be fabulous.

She doesn’t remember our mother, having been 5 when said mother died. Sometimes I was the typical sister who said euww, go away, enough with the sister germs. And sometimes I lamented the lack in my younger siblings’ lives and tried to give them nurturing and encouragement. With about the level of patience and commitment you might expect in a 12-year-old. When she was about 13 and my (then) fiance and I went to her school concert, she nearly fell off her choir bench for waving and pointing us out to her school friends. All that excitement kind of broke my heart.

Over Sibling’s home-made irish cream we relax in the couch, interrupted sporadically by a squealing, giggling 10-year-old, and S.i.l.2 tells us about her recent trip to Timor. I don’t follow the news, I don’t really like war and pestilence, which is odd in a family so full of journalistic types, so I thought Timor was still about the Indonesians. No one laughs out loud at my ignorance. The Timorese have each burnt their neighbour’s house down and now they all live in tents in the grounds of the Dili hospital, pretty much sums it up. Steve Bracks is there trying to teach the government how to run a country. So are some advisors from Portugal, since Timor used to be a Portuguese colony. Steve Bracks, wise, Portuguese advisors, stupid, was her summation, and the Timor government stuck in the middle with No Idea.

And then we discuss why Niece doesn’t wear glasses anymore (because she had an operation) which makes me squirm, which brings us onto that famous Anderson trait, squeamishness. Brother1 first discovered he was squeamish when he found himself lying on the floor of the toilets with a big lump on his head, in the maternity ward where he and his wife had been attending an ante-natal class all of those 27 years ago. He had been lying there half an hour. S.i.l.1 had been practising her breathing on her own wondering how long a toilet visit needed to take. None of us can give blood. More trouble than it’s worth. And we all have a much greater desire not to be told that squeamish story, ever, than curiosity, and a marked avoidance of people who don’t believe us.

I missed out on the Anderson nose (big) and the Anderson laugh (loud). Also, as Jas says on the way home, I am much less like a capricorn than any of them even though I was the only one born under that sign. Families can have star signs, she tells me, as can cities and countries. Which makes me realise that countries, cities and states also have gender. But I’m being nagged to come out and have ‘lunch’. So more about this later.