Mum is in the kitchen whisking pancake batter, and it’s obvious she’s been awake for some time – she’s been out and come back with berries and coffee and juice, which she’s left sitting on the countertop. We always have pancakes for breakfast on birthdays, it’s one of Mum’s traditions, and something I’ve carried on with my own family. I can’t remember ever asking Olaf how he celebrated birthdays in his family, I realise now as I watch Mum standing over the pancake batter, just as she has every birthday morning since the day I was born, and possibly even further back than that. She and Dad still have pancakes for breakfast on our birthdays, even though it’s almost ten years since the last of us flew the nest.
She seems happy, energetic at least; yesterday’s mood has lifted and I feel relieved.
‘Happy unbirthday,’ I say.
‘Likewise,’ she says, smiling. ‘Would you mind doing the blueberries?’
‘It’s alright, I’ll do it,’ Ellen says, appearing from behind me. ‘Liv’s developed an acute phobia of sugar since having children.’
I do my best to laugh, but it comes out as more of a splutter. Ellen gives me a brief smile as she pours sugar into a bowl, mashing the blueberries with a fork and mixing it all together.
‘Look at this, Hedda, do you want to try some?’ she asks, without looking at me. Hedda is drawing at the kitchen table.
Hedda nods. Ellen pours a little of the jam into a bowl then gives Hedda a spoon without saying anything further to either of us. Hedda picks up the bowl, brings it to her lips and slurps up the reddish-blue jam. I hear the sugar crunching between her tiny teeth. I say nothing; it would only lead to a discussion of the way Olaf and I are bringing up the children, which Ellen and Mum often gently ridicule. Has Agnar remembered to go to the toilet today? Ellen asked me a few weeks ago when we were having Sunday dinner at Mum and Dad’s, for instance. We were about to go home, and I called out to Agnar to remind him that he had football training the next day, trying to tear him away from the game he was playing with Dad. Mum burst out laughing at Ellen’s comment. Oh Liv, I don’t mean it unkindly, she said when she noticed that I wasn’t laughing. But you have to admit that Ellen has a point. You have such tight control over them. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just so different from the way that you were brought up yourself – you were all so much more independent, and I couldn’t have given you all the attention that you and Olaf give the children. I bit my tongue to keep myself from commenting that it probably had more to do with her own self-interest, nodding instead. I knew what was coming: children nowadays have a different status to the previous generation, their needs are too much in focus, they’re tiny consumers with enormous demands. And their parents are at their beck and call, desperate to make them happy at the age of three, terrified of the consequences of the slightest misstep. I don’t think I ever wondered if you lot were happy as children, Mum continued – but it doesn’t seem to have done you all any harm.
Ellen and I make our way into town with a shopping list written by Mum in order to buy some things for dinner. Ellen laughed when Mum pulled it out. Honestly, she said, we’ve been discussing this meal for a month now, I think Liv and I can manage the shopping. Mum was offended and asked if there was something wrong with her taking an interest in the details when her husband of forty years was on the verge of turning seventy and had treated his entire family to a holiday, no less. Ellen replied that she was equally concerned with the details of the party intended to celebrate her father of thirty-eight years, but I pulled her away before she had the chance to initiate a full-blown argument, slipping Mum’s shopping list into my pocket on the way.
As I have to wait for Ellen, who’s wandered off to buy herself a handbag she spotted in the window of a shop we drove past, I sit down in a small square and order myself an espresso. I indulge in the first of fifteen carefully planned holiday cigarettes. I take out Mum’s list, her handwriting so distinctive, the letters almost like musical notes, long strokes and small loops, and the image of them resonates somewhere in my memory. I haven’t seen her handwriting for a long time and it reminds me of her diary, which I furtively read back at the age of seventeen or eighteen. It must have been one of several she’d had, there was no beginning and no end, but it lay alone inside the drawer of her bedside table. It was several years old, and I don’t know why it was there, perhaps she’d been looking back on it one evening, and now I wonder if she was looking for something. I’d been entirely consumed by it at the time, getting to know her in a new light – even to this day I don’t regret having read it, because while seventeen-year-old me obviously knew that Mum and Dad had lived a life together before I’d come along, before Ellen and before Håkon, before what would become the virtually perpetual state of being that was us, there was something else there. I read about the time before all that, before and after she met Dad; it was like reading a novel, and what struck me most about it – and what has stayed with me until this day – was just how mature and refined she was at the age of nineteen. Reading her diary at the age of seventeen, she seemed so much older than me, and now, sitting in a square in Italy as a forty-year-old and recalling the mood and concrete formulations within her writing, I still think she seems older and wiser than I am even now. It is as if she had a greater sense of perspective, greater control.
She and Dad met at an event back when they were both at university, I think it was some sort of political debate. Mum wrote a long and detailed diary entry about how they came to be a couple, each day a novella in its own right, with a beginning, a twist in the tale and a conclusion. She describes Dad in great detail, how he was so tall he had to stoop to fit through the doorway into the kitchen, the way he walked and stood, his voice, his laugh. I remember the way he seemed familiar to me in her descriptions, but I simultaneously felt alienated by her analyses and appraisals of him. She depicts them both as being much too philosophical and intentional considering their young age at the time, but I doubt that either of them has ever thought or spoken in the way she describes – it is as if they were two proper, grown-up adults who met and made the very deliberate decision to couple up. Mum must have made that decision, at any rate, though I could never understand why it was so important for her; she was pretty and intelligent and strong and capable, as Dad has always said. My diametrical opposite, he says. He’s just showing off, Mum says, looking pleased, and always adds that there was no shortage of girls hanging around him at any time. That was the guitar, Dad says.
Mum writes nothing about the dissimilarities between them early on, instead concentrating on how well suited they are. They think the same way, their take on things and their ambitions and their values are the same, they’re both politically unconvinced, as she’s put it – something rooted, no doubt, in the same decision paralysis that I’ve inherited from them both – with the exception of the fact that they are both passionately opposed to US intervention in Vietnam. On the pages that follow, she plays out arguments, some concerning Dad, some more general, sticking in articles about the war and the Viet Cong, various sections underlined or circled. After this she writes mostly about the two of them, filling almost an entire diary before reaching the point that they agree to become a couple, even though in reality it takes no more than a few weeks.
She also lies quite openly in her diary entries, as if they were written for others: trivial little fabrications, such as when she describes herself as being ‘often out on my skis, I love being outdoors, and I was so pleased when Sverre suggested we head out for a day’s cross-country skiing together next Sunday’. Mum hates skiing, she always has, she’s taken every opportunity to remind the world of that fact, as if making some sort of protest against something nobody quite understands. I can count on one hand the number of ski trips she’s joined us on, but she’s always been very proud of Dad’s talent, often boasting about it in company, noting how many miles he got under his belt on a recent cross-country trip, or drawing attention to his latest piece of kit.
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nbsp; Towards the end, Mum mentions their dissimilarities, but only ever paints these in a positive light. The fact she needs someone who can lighten her mood, give her the lift she might need, someone with the ability to ‘laugh when she cries and shout when she whispers’. I can’t say I’ve ever heard my mother whisper, her voice is louder than most, but it’s one of many metaphors to be found in her writing – she was trying to take a literary approach, I’ve since thought to myself, the very opposite of my own muddled, frenzied, loved-up, awkward diaries, which I only ever used as an outlet to vent about life, the only place I allowed myself to relinquish control. Her diary seems to have been written for someone else, perhaps for Dad, perhaps for me, but she is the less recognisable of the two of them, and I still wonder if that comes from a lack of insight, or if I don’t know her as well as I might think.
She fills a whole book with her reflections on him and them, chronicling everything they do and discuss, and then, eventually, at the bottom of one page, after an evening on which Dad apparently held forth on The Who’s ‘My Generation’ for quite some time – described in great detail in Mum’s entry – she’s written: I’m overwhelmed.
I remember feeling that there was something scary and unfamiliar yet simultaneously reassuring in her words.
We return to the house with four carrier bags of food. Mum eyes the bags with a look of surprise that borders on disapproval, as if she suspects us of having bought much more than whatever she had written on her list. We have, of course, since Ellen and I know that Mum always underestimates how much we all eat. It’s better than throwing food away, she always says, and it’s not as if anybody ever goes hungry. No, but there always ought to be a little bit of something left over, Ellen has said. Just think of the children in Africa, Håkon has teased, and Mum has always taken his words at face value. Long live Generation Irony, he says.
Mum has devised the menu with some input from Dad, who has requested authentic Italian fare, and so we’re making bruschetta, spaghetti vongole, saltimbocca and tiramisu. Ellen and I have discussed how to time the dishes in such a way that nobody needs to be standing in the kitchen while everyone else is eating, and we get started on chopping onions and cleaning the shellfish. Mum stops us in our tracks, telling us she doesn’t need any more help.
‘Help?’ Ellen says.
‘With the cooking,’ Mum replies.
‘But we’re going to do it together,’ Ellen says.
‘There’s no need,’ Mum says. ‘I’d rather do it by myself, actually. But you can lay the table.’
I don’t know what to say, I don’t know why Mum has decided all of a sudden that the meal we’ve been planning together will be prepared by her and her alone. I try to read her expression, but she’s beyond my reach somehow, not angry, just efficient, and she still seems happy enough, or at least friendly, and there doesn’t seem to be anything more significant concealed behind her words.
‘But seriously, Mum, it’s coming up for five o’clock; you don’t have time to do all of this yourself.’
‘Ellen and I can take care of the tiramisu, at the very least,’ I say, mostly to lend some support to Ellen, who is biting her lip in frustration.
‘Can’t I be allowed to take care of this one meal for Sverre?’ Mum replies, not calling him Dad as she usually does.
Ellen shrugs. She makes her way out of the kitchen and over to Håkon and Olaf, each laid out on their own sun lounger, reading.
‘Have it your way,’ she says as she leaves.
I look at Mum inquisitively, allowing the opportunity for her to explain things now that Ellen has left the room, but she looks away, instead placing the veal steaks on the wooden chopping board Ellen retrieved from a cupboard and covering them with cling film before beating them flat with intense concentration and a series of heavy pounds.
It’s warm enough that we decide to set the long oak table on the terrace for dinner. Agnar comes over, wondering if there’s anything he can do to help, and I’m pleased that he’s taking the initiative and make him responsible for folding napkins and dressing the table. I regret my decision when he returns with an abundance of bougainvillea cuttings taken from the tree around the back of the house, the one Olaf’s brother always boasts about, strewing them grandly over the white linen tablecloth. I imagine the clouds of invisible pollen and miniscule larvae being dispersed across the table, the crockery and cutlery, but I say nothing, because Agnar looks at me as if he can read my mind – or perhaps he’s just grown used to me correcting and commenting on everything he ever does, I think to myself – and I smile instead.
‘That’s lovely with the purple against the white,’ I say, nodding encouragingly, clasping my hands together behind my back to keep myself from adjusting the napkins he’s folded according to instructions he saw in a YouTube video, which he can’t possibly have executed properly, but which he’s spent the last hour working on all the same.
I know I need to refrain from constantly remarking on everything he does, to stop watching him all the time, as Olaf says, and I’m trying, but much of the time I disagree that I should keep my thoughts to myself, given that he’d miss out on so many things that he really ought to learn. I don’t know how you manage to strike that balance, I tell Olaf, I feel compelled to teach him what I know. But he needs to learn some things for himself, Olaf says, he has to find out in his own way. And in that respect Olaf is better than I am, he always has been better at standing on the sidelines and watching Agnar mend a puncture with gaffer tape in spite of any warnings to the contrary, or balance an impossible number of plates and glasses to avoid having to go back and forth between the table and the kitchen more than once, or spend all of his pocket money on some incomprehensible and useless piece of tat, the type that falls apart after two days, seemingly without exception. He experiences the consequences, that’s the best lesson of all, Olaf says, and I agree to an extent, but I rarely pass this test of patience.
It stems from the fact that Mum has always done the same thing, I tell Olaf, she can’t leave anything alone, but unlike her, I do at least have some sense of insight into my own behaviour. She criticises me for being controlling where my children are concerned, but she has no grasp of the fact that her own comments have been – and still are – at least as controlling, I tell him. It’s true that Mum often remarks on things, but she does so very differently: she’s much subtler than I am, of course, and somehow thinks that makes things very different. She doesn’t realise that it’s precisely the subtle nature of her comments that make things so much worse, that the opportunity for misinterpretation increases exponentially and can easily make me think – with good reason or otherwise – that a comment on a shirt I’m wearing is actually intended as a comment on my entire personality and every decision I’ve ever made.
I’ll never be like this with my children, Agnar often shouts at Olaf and me when he loses his temper: I’ll never be this unfair. I’ll actually make the effort to understand my kids! It hurts to hear him say those things, mostly because I know that I felt the same way when I was his age, and beyond that age too, perhaps I still do, and I also know how impossible it’s turned out to be. I’ve spoken to Olaf about it, that perhaps it’s more difficult to change the little things you’ve promised yourself you won’t emulate. In a way, it seems easier to avoid following in your parents’ footsteps if you’ve suffered something much more traumatic, if you’ve been subjected to a greater betrayal. The little faults are the ones you fail to discover, I say, at least until long afterwards and only then within the wider framework of life. I don’t know how to change that. I don’t want to be like Mum was with me, I don’t want to be quite so critical of Agnar and Hedda, I don’t want them to feel that the world is tumbling down around them just because I’m unhappy, or that their emotional lives should be dictated by my own. Olaf thinks I’m exaggerating and that I ought to be grateful to my parents, that it’s a typical example of a first-world problem, having a mother be too attentive. He’s always
been fond of my family, Mum and Dad, Ellen and Håkon; he’s enjoyed a much closer bond with them than with his own family in recent years. He thinks, in contrast to me, that Mum is liberatingly direct, Dad is modest and doesn’t take himself too seriously, and that there’s something about our family that he’s always felt was missing in his own – a sense of freedom and open-mindedness, as he put it on one of the first occasions he spent with us all. I was pleased, felt that I was able to see my family in a new light through Olaf’s eyes, and I understood what he meant. I still do, and I sometimes feel overwhelmed with gratitude when I think of them, of us, but then I become exasperated or distracted by something I think or feel when I’m with one of them. But that’s just how things are, Olaf says, those are the little things, and every family has its own peculiarities, as your mother says.
I call for silence and stand up. Smile, clear my throat, feel my cheeks grow warm. It always feels uncomfortable adopting a formal tone when it’s just family, a change of scene and role that feels unnatural, transparent. I become aware of the fact that my hands are shaking, remember an old piece of advice from Ellen about pulling both sides of the piece of paper to engage one’s muscles and make the paper stiffer. I sweep my gaze over everyone seated around the table before allowing it to rest on Dad.
‘Dear Dad,’ I begin, and at once his eyes start to shine.
Håkon, Ellen and I agreed a few months ago that I would make a speech as the eldest of us siblings, and that they would chip in while I put it together. Neither of them chipped in with anything other than the odd answer to a question from me, assuming as usual that it would get done with me at the helm. This time around I didn’t actually mind, I want to make a speech of my own for Dad, written in my words and without too much interference. I’ve worked on it a lot over the past few months, and it’s forced me to think through my relationship with my father. I was initially so overwhelmed with thoughts, ideas and ways of wording things that I felt I ought to limit myself, to draw out the most important elements and weave a consistent thread. As I sat down to write, however, nothing seemed adequate, nothing was sufficient to express what I wanted to say to him, everything fell flat on paper, it sounded so banal, everything seemed overstated – I felt embarrassed when I attempted to read my words aloud. What’s more, Mum’s voice filtered through, even as I penned the first word, and where I’d imagined her gazing approvingly during the planning stage, I was now only able to envisage her raised eyebrows and the small wrinkles that gather around her mouth – as if in feigned surprise that something can be quite so bad, combined with an obvious effort not to laugh.
A Modern Family Page 4