Dinner at our house was fabulous. We lived in a big brick mansion on the Gulf of Mexico. My parents rebuilt the house like an Italian villa. My father set at the head of the table back to the kitchen where the servants led by a chief ornery cook Andrew served up fresh gumbo, crab, shrimp, okra, crab claw and meat always at the bottom of the bowl.
Dad was the one with the money so we all sat about him, Mama to her right, then Joey my brother who was a magician, working for his Ph.D., taking abuse from my father for living off him. Then I can’t remember who was by Joe, but all the adult children, were there: my brother Buzz a young lawyer and his wife, from Cuba, accepted because she dressed elegantly like my mother and taught at a prestigious school (this was before her cancer). Then my sister Mary a part time real-estate broker going back to school because my Dad would pay and her husband (she must have known) was out on the water in his yacht with his mistress. Then by her my ex-husband did who never spoke because he was furious that my siblings had already wheedled a lot of assets from my parents. Then me.
There was a children’s table in the corner for all our kids. When they reached thirteen they could sit at the main table. Mama got up early to talk with the help and lay out perfect meals. Irish lace tablecloth, crystal goblets, the fourteen-year-old pregnant maid would refill. Then throughout dinner we would sit at our table while wine was passed. A half hour earlier we had hae bloody Mary’s with crudités and crab dip.
The son-in-laws were noticeably late or absent, as was my father unless he went on a balcony overlooking the Gulf for Dad to brag or have a quiet chat. All or us needed money and were living beyond our means, with 3 or 4 children each at private schools costing $3K to $30 K. We felt pre-Katrina it was the only way to protect ourselves.
We could have friends at dinner. The number of people didn’t matter as long as my father knew who they were—preferably friends from high school who came with backgrounds and money. My Dad was always afraid of strangers who came to table and might rob him. So dinner was at one p.m. because the help left at five. Though they left plates for my parents and gumbo or crawfish bisque for us adult kids.
We had steak T-Bone, broiled, fresh corn, homemade ice cream, fresh spinach garlic bread. Who was missing was me. We had to table about superficial things, the food, skiing on the water, the table flowers.
No one liked my husband because he was rude and he got eventually abusive as my parents aged and the dinners in the country stopped, and stipends for the kids, and I had to rent the cottage on my parents’ grounds to pay my kids college tuition.
It was a time of grandeur and superficiality, but I miss the fresh buttered biscuits and the crème brule. My mother’s gorgeous silver service.
She was a quiet intellectual who read Theorad de Chardin before she instructed the maids. The table was about my father and he was about money and one’s importance descended from what kid (adult) at the timehad the most money. So long as my parents had that life and big house I never grew up. After dinner might be a tray of old liquors and always a demitasse of chicory coffee.
On the good side, I wrote a book in the country because my mother hired a maid when my lazy husband went to the beach. She believed a woman’s intellect was as important as a man’s. Doing less housework I had the time for my mind to expand.
But dinner at the table on Saturday and Sunday was a prerequisite. The maid would run over from the big house to my cottage (where my husband, children, and friends were) and say how many for lunch? It was that simple. And I did get to see my sister, brothers, and experience their kindnesses and greed on a regular basis. That diner brought together five households two days a week, for my cousin Ralph also built a house on the grounds.
Looking back on it, I traded my identity as an adult but I also don’t know how I could have survived, raised my marvelous children with a sweet husband grown lazy in the sunlight of my parents’ wealth.
There was a children’s table in the corner for all our kids. When they reached thirteen they could sit at the main table. Mama got up early to talk with the help and lay out perfect meals. Irish lace tablecloth, crystal goblets, the fourteen-year-old pregnant maid would refill. Then throughout dinner we would sit at our table while wine was passed. A half hour earlier we had hae bloody Mary’s with crudités and crab dip.
The son-in-laws were noticeably late or absent, as was my father unless he went on a balcony overlooking the Gulf for Dad to brag or have a quiet chat. All or us needed money and were living beyond our means, with 3 or 4 children each at private schools costing $3K to $30 K. We felt pre-Katrina it was the only way to protect ourselves.
We could have friends at dinner. The number of people didn’t matter as long as my father knew who they were—preferably friends from high school who came with backgrounds and money. My Dad was always afraid of strangers who came to table and might rob him. So dinner was at one p.m. because the help left at five. Though they left plates for my parents and gumbo or crawfish bisque for us adult kids.
We had steak T-Bone, broiled, fresh corn, homemade ice cream, fresh spinach garlic bread. Who was missing was me. We had to table about superficial things, the food, skiing on the water, the table flowers.
No one liked my husband because he was rude and he got eventually abusive as my parents aged and the dinners in the country stopped, and stipends for the kids, and I had to rent the cottage on my parents’ grounds to pay my kids college tuition.
It was a time of grandeur and superficiality, but I miss the fresh buttered biscuits and the crème brule. My mother’s gorgeous silver service.
She was a quiet intellectual who read Theorad de Chardin before she instructed the maids. The table was about my father and he was about money and one’s importance descended from what kid (adult) at the timehad the most money. So long as my parents had that life and big house I never grew up. After dinner might be a tray of old liquors and always a demitasse of chicory coffee.
On the good side, I wrote a book in the country because my mother hired a maid when my lazy husband went to the beach. She believed a woman’s intellect was as important as a man’s. Doing less housework I had the time for my mind to expand.
But dinner at the table on Saturday and Sunday was a prerequisite. The maid would run over from the big house to my cottage (where my husband, children, and friends were) and say how many for lunch? It was that simple. And I did get to see my sister, brothers, and experience their kindnesses and greed on a regular basis. That diner brought together five households two days a week, for my cousin Ralph also built a house on the grounds.
Looking back on it, I traded my identity as an adult but I also don’t know how I could have survived, raised my marvelous children with a sweet husband grown lazy in the sunlight of my parents’ wealth.
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