Children – Anton Martin Smith Writer

And so this was the last task to do. The annual greeting card giving. I usually only do one – & it goes to the ‘asian eatery’ (as I call it) – my regular hangout. I get a great personalised $20 deal – for this I am allowed a choice of 4 different items – Nasi Goreng / Sweet & Sour Pork / Works burger / Crispy Chicken. All options come with quality beer – I get Steinlager or Ashahi if its in stock. Nasi Goreng is the ‘go-to’ main. Anyway, I digress.

So I make the greeting card – I have water colors & ink etc. The final image is a ‘fat sunglasses-wearing Santa’ with his shirt off. It’s a ‘bang up’ (i.e. fast & mediocre) job, but at least it’s colorful. In one hand Santa has an opened beer bottle & the other is ‘Santa Sack (full of ‘prezzies’ – that is xmas presents). In a speech bubble Santa is saying that he is quiting while ‘on the job’ because he’d rather go to the ‘asian eatery’. At the bottom of the image there is a rat that has observed it all & says “Santa you lazy bastard”.

So that’s good – card done. I go to drop off the card in person. This card must be my seventh in a row by now (??). Tradition can hem you in – but that’s not usually a bad thing – for the result aimed at is usually the concept of ‘social cohesion’.

So fast forward ten mins & now I am in from of the owner with my card. Because of the language/cultural barrier the main owner lady (lets call her ‘Vicki’) needs me to explain it. I do so & the funny part is her joke that the ‘fat Santa’ is actually me. We have a little laugh. I can laugh at myself pretty freely these days, age helps on this matter.

While this card-giving is going on, I notice that a father & his daughter sitting at a restaurant table for two having food – they are Chinese as well. I have learnt that it is a tradition for travelling Chinese ethnicity folk to visit foreign Chinese restaurants. of course that’s only natural – we westerners like ‘ex-pats’ with burger bars in asia after all, do we not?.

I decide show the card to the little girl & she likes it. I introduce myself. The father is ‘Barry’ who is working at a major university here, visiting from China. His daughter is ‘Angelica’ (not their real names). The ‘asian eatery’ owner – Vicki has given me a box of chocolates (the usual gift in return for the card – that’s pretty nice profit for me! Surely those hand made cards of mine will never be valuable). I offer one chocolate to each both father & daughter – they oblige the small token. I offer another, but the Father who I presume is weight conscious, declines (he is rake thin & I joke that he could use fattening up).

So then some chit chat. Barry askes me a little about what I do & I explain my day job instead of my highest interests (writing, studying, reading, drawing etc), although I do slip in a past Melbourne life in Telecoms for good measure (I guess part of me doesn’t want him to think l I’m a total hick from the sticks’). I am a kiwi & we talk ourselves down – probably a very bad trait, but I now try to combat that a little as I go – after all it’s clearly wise to not hide all your talents.

The ‘convo’ (as the aussies say) is going well. The father – ‘Barry’ says I should visit China some time. I say I’d like to. I don’t mention the truth that my budget won’t allow it. After all now my life is simplified vs a decade ago, when I was a young-ish urban office worker & a semi-frequent international traveler. The polite hello is now at its natural end. We say our goodbyes. They leave to go back to their car to go back to their (temporary) normal lives in the nearby university town in Otago NZ. As they go I wonder if the mother is with them in NZ? I assume so given separation/divorce doesn’t really happen in Chinese culture (unlike it’s normality in the West). Perhaps she is back in China. After all, some people can’t travel at all. And as I’m older I’m more of a homebody that ever (but I am a ‘arty & write-ie’ type – we prefer to travel with mind vs legs).

So that interaction over I think of my stomach. A common trait. I could lose ten kg. I sit & start eating my heavily salted & sauced battered fish sans chips. I have a book on the table – poetry – an old NZ classic magazine Landfall. Landfall is known to be well past it’s heyday, but still has some good writing here & there. It has a crappy bookmark.

Lo & behold the little girl I was taking to with her father just before – Angelica comes back. She gives me a Chinese ornamental book-mark as a gift (the ones housed in plastic). I say thankyou ‘that’s great as I need a better bookmark’. I tell her it’s good to read (I’m sure her dad has this covered, but a little reinforcement can’t but help). The little girl has a real kindness to her. She has a little soft toy lamb in her arms & I ask her if it has a name – she says no, so I say ‘you could call it ‘Bleetie’ – by her slight confused look, I’m not sure if she understood the relevance of my suggestion to the sound a lamb makes. I said thankyou to Angelica & wished her goodbye.

As I put some soy sauce on on my battered fish. As I sat munching on tastiness, I thought that that was a really lovely thing that just happened. It warmed my sometimes too also ‘battered’ weary 47-year-olds heart more than a little. The Chinese in general are not perfect (like any ethnic group), but I admire that they try to be polite as much as possible. We’ve lost that too much in the West I think. They have a lot of other good traits too. They accept hard work with grace, unlike many of us now semi-dazed Westerners. We ourselves aren’t quite ‘down & out’ just yet though.

I hope Barry & Angelica have a good time in NZ. From what I’ve heard I know it’s still not entirely easy to be asian in NZ – especially in the small towns. I also hope the artificial intelligence Barry is working on doesn’t all put half the world out of work by 2030. But then my day job is shifting dirt, cutting lawns & banging nails (and a bit more than that) – so I figure I should be ok at least until age 62 in the year 2040. Who knows maybe I’ll be a proper ‘quirky, niche-partially-sought-after-by-humans, non-AI-cottage -industry-human-writer’ by 2032.

But I know that the future will be what it will be. But today was very ‘humanly nice’, you might say. You just need to string a few days like that in a row I think. It took me a while to learn that, but ‘better late than never’ as the old Western saying says.

I would also like to wish anyone who reads this a Merry Xmas & New Year!

Anton Martin Smith

The Men In the Mountains sketch by M.A. Smith 12.5cm x 17cm

by M. Anton Smith

For many years I thought the old man was a bastard.

In fact, I think for a male younger than 35, this is the compulsory view.

No matter if your dad was Hitler-like or Christ-like.

When you get older you soon start to give these old fellas some begrudging credit.

These feelings of detente happen in piecemeal fashion over a decade or two…. or three.

There are numerous reasons for this realpolitik iceberg finally breaking the waterline.

The waterline that is ‘The Memories of Yesteryears Child-Parent Relationship’.

The first is by middle-age you have experienced the reality of how hard life is.

If you are someone who must work to live, then life is by definition hard.

Yes – for most of us just keeping the wolves from the present door & future doors –

is the prime task that must hoover up at least 75% of our available energy & attention.

So, this means that the ‘Child of the Adult’ is already scampering for the 25% balance.

If the Child has siblings, then this 25% gets splintered & reduced, often unevenly.

So, the children & of the true working classes – i.e. everyone who must work to live –

Be they the honourable ditch digger or the dishonourable lawyer –

Are scrambling over ever decreasing crumbs from the table that is available parental attention.

Worse that remainder parental attention is likely crabby-ness infused from a bad day/week/year/decade at the office.

The other problem from the working parents point of view is this:

Children are by nature immature.

This means Children are by nature annoying.

All frazzled working parents have to deal with this bold fact as well.

Of course, many Parents are negligent, sub-par & decidedly useless –

Some are even criminal in their ways.

Some Parents should indeed be ex-communicated by the adult child.

I am not denying these as-plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face truths.

I’m merely also acknowledging that the Child’s perspective is by nature warped.

If this warped analysis of the ills of our parents‘ parenting is never shone upon –

With the lights of reasonableness –

Then are we not simply punishing ourselves as now grown-up children?

Also, now as I look back as a child of the 80’s,

Being a latch-key kid had its benefits –

Mostly we latch-keys roamed those hills, rivers, streams are city streets like carefree bandits.

Conversely, woe to the children of the 21st Century:

Condemned to be hovered over by overly-neurotic-mega-safety-conscious parents.

Coddling vs Negligence – they are both bad for the future adult,

But at least negligence can result in adults with a tough but successful exterior, as much as drug addicts.

Parental Coddling I don’t think ever dissipates, short of serving at the front of a Big War.

This is why I belatedly realised that you may as well forgive the old man,

For his real misgivings as well as the imagined ones –

And don’t kid yourself that the two cases aren’t muddled up.

As the years left become less than those we have lived,

There’s no good reason to hold onto those warped child representations of our past.

Unless we value Pig-headedness over well-being.

& I ask you –

Who in their right mind would choose to do that?

The old man might have been a bastard –

The point is that there is enough reasonable doubt.

I may as well not convict.

And another way to look at the general problem of assesing you parents as an adult is this –

The long admired legal maxim:

It is much worse to convict a single innocent, than let free a hundred of the guilty.

So it should indeed be a high bar to ex-communicate your mother or father for life.

As a wise man once made up just now:

Pig-headedness is oh-so-fun when all around you are your fellow pigheads.

But all hell breaks loose when the bacon truck arrives through the farm gate.

The very same farm gate that had been safely locked your whole pigheaded life.

Yes there is a wicked pleasure to be gained in Pig-headedness –

But as sure as sliced ham it will lead to the slaughterhouse.

BONUS MATERIAL

[Note: I have written this piece after growing older & revisiting my feelings about my own thoughts of my parents, in particular my father. Given that we are all sons & daughters of Parents, we all are cursed to have by their nature, very emotional views of our upbringings. These words are simply (I expect) a typical re-examining of the parent child relationship through the eyes of the middle-aged person. Middle age usually brings experience & this means the middle-ager has become at least somewhat wiser. This extended engagement in the long battle that is the now many decades daily adult life helps us open our eyes wider to see a better view. I know many others my age will be able to sympathise with the ‘somewhat semi autobiographic’ views told. The average member of the ‘over 35 crowd’ should definitely reconsider the philosophy of forgiveness in relation to their Parents – simply because the truth maybe they are simply clinging to comfortable inaccurate views of their blanketed-but-still-there, inner child-self. – M. A. Smith]

Tag: Children

“A Nice Moment At The Asian Eatery” (A Blog Post)

“Musings About Hating Your Parents (That Old Chestnut)” (A Poem + Bonus Material).