Oh my! No, never saw my parents naked, and I'm not sure whether my mum was ever fully naked in front of my dad. She slept in her bra and pants. The passage where your mother cries reading about the female orgasm made me think of Mum. When Donna Summer's Love to Love You was in the charts, Mum said she sounded like she was having a baby or having a tooth extracted. She really didn't know. Sad, really.
Oh. My. God. No wonder I love your writing. You are singing some painful parts my song here, in the most hilarious and horrible way. Been meaning to subscribe. Now I GOTTA do it. 🤮
Superlatives abound in my head. Pathos, rigorous social analysis, such a deeply loving but realist memoir of a parent, and incredible humour. I love to read perspectives on mothers that manage to capture the contradictions, the meld, as you do so exquisitely here. My experience with my mum resonates and that is hugely helpful to me. You structure this piece beautifully, it’s circular and so satisfying. Thank you. ❤️🔥
Thank *you*, Kate. Those are wonderful words to receive. It has taken me decades to put this in words, and it’s so lovely to feel I have done something worthwhile. Your appreciation is appreciated.
Oh my, this has made me cry with laughter in a very uncomfortable way. I got used to shouting “Are you decent?” when bringing anyone home as a teenager. Walking in with a friend and finding her naked and up a stepladder doing some decorating was mortifying.
🤣 The image! I’m so glad to hear a similar story. So familiar, except weirdly that was a question we never learned to ask. But up a stepladder decorating naked, totally something mine might have done.
Oh my god, I’m sorry, I was sniggering into my coffee!
This reminded of when my dad booked a campsite somewhere near St Jean de Luz on the French Atlantic coast back in the 80s. Apparently he thought ‘naturiste’ meant nature reserve. I can still see my grandad sat in a deckchair on a nudist beach, wearing hat, string vest and rolled up trousers, resolutely staring at a newspaper because he had no idea where else to put his eyes 🤣
"On another level, constantly exposing your offspring and their friends to your nakedness, well past their puberties and without their consent, feels questionable."
My god... Thankfully, I only dealt with this from one parent (my mother). I lost count how many times she barged into my room, fully naked, to wake me up. While not nearly as horrific as a penis in the paté, there is something truly disturbing about, as an adolescent boy, waking up to your mother standing at the end of your bed completely nude and angry that you didn't wake up the first time she spoke. Thank you for sharing this. Even if it IS traumatic, it helps to know that you're not the only one with the image of your parent's naked body burned into your memory.
I was surrounded by women similar to your mum in my childhood. So true, so sad. I’m glad she found her naked self but jeez, that must have been tough for you kids
Thanks, Rebecca! Yes, a lot of her friends were the same, a bit wild. No real though about impact on kids. Her whole philosophy was “kids are resilient”.
This is a stunning piece Ros, and I can't help feeling for your mum - a life of lost opportunities until she found liberation in nakedness. But that you should have had to live through this makes it all so wrong. The paté scene is just so gross, a perfect image of how self-absorbed and witless your stepdad must have been.
I feel for mum, too. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would have been to be a brilliant woman coming of age in the 1950s, when sexism and repression hit new lows (after the relatively freedoms for women during the war). She mentioned that lost opportunity of working on Watson & Crick’s research team regularly enough that I knew it really smarted that she had passed that up for a marriage in which she was incredibly unhappy (and expected to knuckle down to being the perfect 1950s housewife and mother; and bless her, she really give it her best). My stepdad had his own problems. Self-absorbed is a good word. For all that he was a GP (so not actually witless) the impression he gave was of someone whose emotional development had hit something of a wall in toddlerhood. I don’t know enough about his childhood to understand him, but from what I remember it was both insecure and indulged; he was dragged around the country by his actress mother, who both doted on him and (to some extent) ignored him while busying herself with her career. I have a vision of him (created from something my mother told me) of him being brought out to be admired by his mother’s friends/admirers when it suited her and at other times left to his own devices. A lonely child.
Oh that's all so sad, trauma passed on and passed on. I just finished reading Doris Lessing's Alfred and Emily, which is also about an unsuitable housewives and mother's. Doris Lessing herself left her two children with her first husband, saying they'd be better off with their father. Motherhood is a complicated thing.
The arc somewhat reminds me of my own but with a different set of expressions on the part of parents and stepparents.
All of them read books, some voraciously (one of my mothers two degrees was librarian) and I am sure that some of the many faulty conclusions they’d drawn about life in general and child rearing specifically were from those books. My own faulty conclusions are mostly based on ineptitude, social and emotional.
They were not nudists and I am grateful that my stepfather didn’t drag his appendage in any food as far as I can remember. I don’t know if I had been able to live at all without at least the promise of patè. So to speak.
However he seemed much more comfortable with nakedness than you would expect from a man grown up in a family of missionaries in what was then Rhodesia which means that it, the appendage, still resides visually within me.
The one food I’ve eaten that I really cannot abide is fermented Icelandic shark. I was probably served it in the wrong way but my memory of it is akin to “if urine was chewable”.
That is an extraordinary thing to have eaten. I mentioned it to my son who spends a lot of time on the net and he said it is notoriously vile and you are supposed to eat it outside in freezing temperatures.
Child rearing books in particular have a lot to answer for.
My parents were zealously covered at all times. My first boyfriend’s parents (when I was 17) were more, er, relaxed. I walked in on his mum when she was on the toilet and she said, ´Oh, it’s okay, you’re family now.’
His dad left pornographic magazines lying around the living room.
I realised that different families had different rules.
What a hilariously tragic, traumatic story. I can’t fathom what this must’ve been like for you. My parents also went through a “liberated” period (tantra, Buddhism, open-marriage in a conservative Midwestern town) but nudity was never part of it, or at least I was never exposed to their nudity. 😂 Ros, what a fabulous piece. Is this part of a larger memoir? I want to start from the beginning if so!
Yes, Kimberly, it is memoir-in-progress! I’m writing it rather randomly on Substack and in a Scrivener file, but I intend to stitch it all together into a sensible order :-)
Well, the title was a literal statement after all, but not in the way I thought it might be. I was afraid it was going to be a penis mixed into the pate (sorry, no special characters available), yuck. A penis dragged through the pate is still yuck, but less so (maybe). Ros, you don't need to write fiction; your real-life experiences are far more interesting. This is so sixties and seventies. I remember when porn films went mainstream for a while in the early seventies. There were porn theaters in trendy shopping districts in Kansas City. Couples viewed the latest full-length fare without reservation. That didn't last long.
In regard to your 'Stage 2' meeting, how humiliating. My wife went through something like this as a public school teacher. The school district administration decided to reorganize the school at which she had taught for ten years to alleviate poor performance by the students on standardized tests. They blamed the teachers. A part of the process involved teachers re-applying for their positions and being interviewed by a committee of parents. The parents kept the popular teachers, that is, the teachers with low expectations who gave out high grades to everyone, especially the athletes. The ones that maintained high standards and high expectations for the students were reassigned to other schools, my wife included.
I’ve been a vegetarian for 40 years, but before that I was put off sauerkraut because I found a used condom in the plate I bought at Brussels main station. The waiter said it was the chef’s; no excuse can be made for your stepfather’s behaviour.
A great story. By comparison my parents were very normal to the point of never talking to we three kids about either their medical history (aka their bodies) and their finances. What we know came from my Dad’s sisters and a sister of my mother.
Oh my! No, never saw my parents naked, and I'm not sure whether my mum was ever fully naked in front of my dad. She slept in her bra and pants. The passage where your mother cries reading about the female orgasm made me think of Mum. When Donna Summer's Love to Love You was in the charts, Mum said she sounded like she was having a baby or having a tooth extracted. She really didn't know. Sad, really.
What our mothers put up with! I can truly understand why mine went a little wild when she found out.
That's so sad!
Oh. My. God. No wonder I love your writing. You are singing some painful parts my song here, in the most hilarious and horrible way. Been meaning to subscribe. Now I GOTTA do it. 🤮
Thanks, Pilar! LOVE what you said in your subscription note; thank you for writing something so shareable :-).
Superlatives abound in my head. Pathos, rigorous social analysis, such a deeply loving but realist memoir of a parent, and incredible humour. I love to read perspectives on mothers that manage to capture the contradictions, the meld, as you do so exquisitely here. My experience with my mum resonates and that is hugely helpful to me. You structure this piece beautifully, it’s circular and so satisfying. Thank you. ❤️🔥
Thank *you*, Kate. Those are wonderful words to receive. It has taken me decades to put this in words, and it’s so lovely to feel I have done something worthwhile. Your appreciation is appreciated.
Oh my, this has made me cry with laughter in a very uncomfortable way. I got used to shouting “Are you decent?” when bringing anyone home as a teenager. Walking in with a friend and finding her naked and up a stepladder doing some decorating was mortifying.
🤣 The image! I’m so glad to hear a similar story. So familiar, except weirdly that was a question we never learned to ask. But up a stepladder decorating naked, totally something mine might have done.
Oh my god, I’m sorry, I was sniggering into my coffee!
This reminded of when my dad booked a campsite somewhere near St Jean de Luz on the French Atlantic coast back in the 80s. Apparently he thought ‘naturiste’ meant nature reserve. I can still see my grandad sat in a deckchair on a nudist beach, wearing hat, string vest and rolled up trousers, resolutely staring at a newspaper because he had no idea where else to put his eyes 🤣
"On another level, constantly exposing your offspring and their friends to your nakedness, well past their puberties and without their consent, feels questionable."
My god... Thankfully, I only dealt with this from one parent (my mother). I lost count how many times she barged into my room, fully naked, to wake me up. While not nearly as horrific as a penis in the paté, there is something truly disturbing about, as an adolescent boy, waking up to your mother standing at the end of your bed completely nude and angry that you didn't wake up the first time she spoke. Thank you for sharing this. Even if it IS traumatic, it helps to know that you're not the only one with the image of your parent's naked body burned into your memory.
Oh Kurtis, I feel for you! What were they *thinking*?!
Honestly? I think they're only "thinking" about their own comfort and convenience. Everyone else be damned.
I was surrounded by women similar to your mum in my childhood. So true, so sad. I’m glad she found her naked self but jeez, that must have been tough for you kids
Thanks, Rebecca! Yes, a lot of her friends were the same, a bit wild. No real though about impact on kids. Her whole philosophy was “kids are resilient”.
Yes, my adult self feels for those women, my child self felt quite unsafe around that energy
There is the heart of it.
This is a stunning piece Ros, and I can't help feeling for your mum - a life of lost opportunities until she found liberation in nakedness. But that you should have had to live through this makes it all so wrong. The paté scene is just so gross, a perfect image of how self-absorbed and witless your stepdad must have been.
I feel for mum, too. I can’t imagine how frustrating it would have been to be a brilliant woman coming of age in the 1950s, when sexism and repression hit new lows (after the relatively freedoms for women during the war). She mentioned that lost opportunity of working on Watson & Crick’s research team regularly enough that I knew it really smarted that she had passed that up for a marriage in which she was incredibly unhappy (and expected to knuckle down to being the perfect 1950s housewife and mother; and bless her, she really give it her best). My stepdad had his own problems. Self-absorbed is a good word. For all that he was a GP (so not actually witless) the impression he gave was of someone whose emotional development had hit something of a wall in toddlerhood. I don’t know enough about his childhood to understand him, but from what I remember it was both insecure and indulged; he was dragged around the country by his actress mother, who both doted on him and (to some extent) ignored him while busying herself with her career. I have a vision of him (created from something my mother told me) of him being brought out to be admired by his mother’s friends/admirers when it suited her and at other times left to his own devices. A lonely child.
Oh that's all so sad, trauma passed on and passed on. I just finished reading Doris Lessing's Alfred and Emily, which is also about an unsuitable housewives and mother's. Doris Lessing herself left her two children with her first husband, saying they'd be better off with their father. Motherhood is a complicated thing.
I just screamed out No! while reading about your stepfather. 😂😂
🤣🤣🤣
The arc somewhat reminds me of my own but with a different set of expressions on the part of parents and stepparents.
All of them read books, some voraciously (one of my mothers two degrees was librarian) and I am sure that some of the many faulty conclusions they’d drawn about life in general and child rearing specifically were from those books. My own faulty conclusions are mostly based on ineptitude, social and emotional.
They were not nudists and I am grateful that my stepfather didn’t drag his appendage in any food as far as I can remember. I don’t know if I had been able to live at all without at least the promise of patè. So to speak.
However he seemed much more comfortable with nakedness than you would expect from a man grown up in a family of missionaries in what was then Rhodesia which means that it, the appendage, still resides visually within me.
The one food I’ve eaten that I really cannot abide is fermented Icelandic shark. I was probably served it in the wrong way but my memory of it is akin to “if urine was chewable”.
That is an extraordinary thing to have eaten. I mentioned it to my son who spends a lot of time on the net and he said it is notoriously vile and you are supposed to eat it outside in freezing temperatures.
Child rearing books in particular have a lot to answer for.
Brilliant, Ros!
My parents were zealously covered at all times. My first boyfriend’s parents (when I was 17) were more, er, relaxed. I walked in on his mum when she was on the toilet and she said, ´Oh, it’s okay, you’re family now.’
His dad left pornographic magazines lying around the living room.
I realised that different families had different rules.
Thanks, Wendy, wow. That IS relaxed! 🤣
If I had to go into the bathroom while my mum was in the bath, she had three strategic flannels at the ready.
What a hilariously tragic, traumatic story. I can’t fathom what this must’ve been like for you. My parents also went through a “liberated” period (tantra, Buddhism, open-marriage in a conservative Midwestern town) but nudity was never part of it, or at least I was never exposed to their nudity. 😂 Ros, what a fabulous piece. Is this part of a larger memoir? I want to start from the beginning if so!
Yes, Kimberly, it is memoir-in-progress! I’m writing it rather randomly on Substack and in a Scrivener file, but I intend to stitch it all together into a sensible order :-)
Oh wonderful! I look forward to reading it in full when it’s ready.
Well, the title was a literal statement after all, but not in the way I thought it might be. I was afraid it was going to be a penis mixed into the pate (sorry, no special characters available), yuck. A penis dragged through the pate is still yuck, but less so (maybe). Ros, you don't need to write fiction; your real-life experiences are far more interesting. This is so sixties and seventies. I remember when porn films went mainstream for a while in the early seventies. There were porn theaters in trendy shopping districts in Kansas City. Couples viewed the latest full-length fare without reservation. That didn't last long.
In regard to your 'Stage 2' meeting, how humiliating. My wife went through something like this as a public school teacher. The school district administration decided to reorganize the school at which she had taught for ten years to alleviate poor performance by the students on standardized tests. They blamed the teachers. A part of the process involved teachers re-applying for their positions and being interviewed by a committee of parents. The parents kept the popular teachers, that is, the teachers with low expectations who gave out high grades to everyone, especially the athletes. The ones that maintained high standards and high expectations for the students were reassigned to other schools, my wife included.
Just grim. I am sorry that happened to your wife. So unfair.
Tell me where the porn theatres used to be? I want to research this myself😆
I’ve been a vegetarian for 40 years, but before that I was put off sauerkraut because I found a used condom in the plate I bought at Brussels main station. The waiter said it was the chef’s; no excuse can be made for your stepfather’s behaviour.
There is no adequate response to your sauerkraut experience. And I agree re stepfather. He had to have known. There are nerve endings.
Jeez! That is gross. Any advance on condom in the sauerkraut?!
I truly hope not.
Ha! Me too!
This was amazing! (But also I’m sorry…)
Thanks Joy! I will take amazing :-)
A great story. By comparison my parents were very normal to the point of never talking to we three kids about either their medical history (aka their bodies) and their finances. What we know came from my Dad’s sisters and a sister of my mother.