REUNION > FRIDAY 23rd OCTOBER
Landed at just after 5.00pm & out very quickly as no checked-in baggage – nice – & Mum greeted me warmly.
How long have I waited for this!
We hugged, smiled – with & without masks! – & made our way to greet Bob who was with the car outside. We chatted well in the car & I was welcomed into Deweyland around 30 minutes later.
Ah. Boy it was dirty. Dirt everywhere. Stains all over the carpets. Liquid stains on the polished wood floors. And it smelt – oh my did it smell of dog and that horrible damp washing smell too.
Not a great start, & Mum herself seemed slightly on edge & very frail, along with lacking any self-confidence, but she was beaming & clearly very happy I’d arrived. Bob wasn’t giving much away, natch. It was over 18 months since I’d last seen them & they’d definitely aged – well, haven’t we all eh . . .
I was flagging after my recent travels so after dinner – which included wine for Mum – yep, that’s right, wine! No ‘lite beer only with food’ at all, but 13% wine – I headed upstairs to bed relatively early after expressing my joy at seeing them both, & noted my first impressions:
- Bob says Mum is worse when he tells her she’s doing something incorrectly – such as putting an item back in the kitchen in the wrong place.
- Mum had x1 small glass of wine with dinner, Bob says he rarely drinks wine himself – in fact I didn’t see Bob drink any alcohol all evening.
- Bob likes to wind Mum up. He asked her 4 or 5 times to tell him the names of something he’d forgotten. Cruel. No empathy.
- Dog has fleas. Badly. Carpet has fleas. Very badly.
- Den stinks of dog. And is very dirty. Whole house is dirty.
- Mum very happy to see me. Greeted me so very warmly – held me & kept stroking my arm as we walked & had apologised for Bob before we even arrived at the car.
Upshot: All is far from lost . . .