Ghost Of Christmas Past Part 2

By definition, you don't really see a crisis coming. Certainly not a mental and/or emotional one. They tend to wear the most nondescript clothing.

Dinner at my mother’s house has become something of a ‘thing’ each Thursday. I’m not sure how it started but it punctuates the week and it’s always good to catch up with her news of the allotment committee.  

After which her husband and I discuss the world in general over too many drinks in the conservatory whilst my mother makes dinner.

We all have a chat and a drink first. The subject skirts around upcoming yuletide festivities.

Mother’s Husband: …But that was a funny Christmas morning last year though, eh?

My ever diminishing number of regular readers will remember that last Christmas I met and spoke to my father with whom I’d had next-to zero contact in nearly thirty years. We had a pleasant chat with the result that I felt rather content for the bulk of this year.

Mother’s Husband: Your Dad turning up! And he DIDN’T EVEN RECOGNISE YOU! His own son!

Me: What?

My mother gives her husband the sort of 'look' I’d grown accustomed to in childhood.

Mother’s Husband: [Quite drunk and not noticing The Look]: Yeah! After he’d been chatting to you he came into the kitchen and asked your Aunty H  “who that bloke was in the sittng-room” he’d just been talking to! Amazing.

My mother kicks her husband’s calf. He notices THAT, looks at her and then at my face.

Mother’s Husband: Oh.

I light a cigarette in silence.

Some time passes.

My Mother: It’s lasagne tonight.

Me: Sounds great, thanks.