Another Pudding is Possible
A tale where the author finally gets the message that his father doesn’t like rice pudding!
It started with a little group of artists in the small city of Dundee, on the East coast of Scotland. I was living with my Dad as his carer at the time. We were in our home town of Newport-on-Tay, which faces Dundee across the mouth of the River Tay.
The artists had started a monthly silent walk on a Saturday in Newport and I decided to join them. After one of the walks we are gathered at the home of two of the artists who also lived in Newport.
Back at the artists’ house, someone has a guitar. There are a lot of postcards in the house where we have gathered. The guitarist and I set about making up songs – telling stories about what the postcards might be depicting. It is a happy time – someone even scribbles down the lyrics as we weave our songs.
As I said, I was living with my Dad as his carer at the time. The menu for my meals with Dad was fairly consistent – both of us being creatures of habit. Saturday dinner’s dessert course was always a rice pudding. Back at Dad’s house, the rice pudding is in the oven. Eventually, fear for its fate overcomes the desire to stay on at the artists’ house and continue with the song-making. I rush home. I catch the pudding just in time.
I had lived with my Dad for about three years by then and every Saturday delivered a rice pudding as the crowning glory of the week’s menu. However, it was on that very Saturday of the silent walk and the singing and story-telling that my Dad explained he did not in fact like rice pudding. Communication had never been our strong point. I was reminded of the ancient stories of a utopia called Cockaigne. Strangely, access to Cockainge could only be achieved by eating through three miles of rice pudding. I had subjected my father to – if not three miles of rice pudding – then certainly three years of weekly doses. Laid end to end, and with a seven-inch bowl, it comes to around thirty-five yards. It would have taken another 171 years of weekly puddings for my Dad to traverse the three miles to the mythical utopia of Cockaigne, and he was already 92.
But I like to think that I am not a hard-hearted son. Rice pudding was replaced by trifle from then on. Another world might not be possible, but for my Dad at least, another pudding was possible. In truth though, Saturdays were never quite the same.
Caring for an elderly relative is a strange experience. In my mind it has become linked to our human obsession with utopia – both personal utopias and utopias designed for whole societies. I know that probably sounds a bit obscure, so let me explain.
First there is that time in our lives (if our parents live long enough) when you, the child, start to be seen as the ‘responsible adult’. It might be at a restaurant, when the waitress automatically places the bill in front of you rather than your father or mother. Or it might be during some medical consultation about one of your parents, where the doctor addresses all of their comments to you rather than your Mum or Dad, even although the consultation is about them.
Such events set off a trail of thoughts in my head. Dad’s life was once in the ascendant. He had hopes and dreams about building a future for himself, through study and work. Then he met Mum and together they planned to find a house, to make that house a home and to make it a safe and loving home for the family they had together. A personal utopia therefore. Perhaps not perfection, but as good as my parents could make it.
Society in general has similar aims. Opportunities for study. Meaningful work. Improving lifestyles. Safety. Home. Human flourishing. There comes a point, like those moments in our personal lives, when we realise that whether society is good or bad is down to us – we are the responsible adults.
But then the inevitable decline as illness, old age and frailty set in. How does Dad or Mum feel about this? It’s a difficult thing to witness – a difficult thing to discuss. The child can only hope that their parents don’t feel that their efforts to build a life for themselves have been in vain. In short, you hope that you’ve not been a disappointment to them! You hope that they are proud of their offspring!
Time, then, is what makes the difference in a human life – from starting out with hope and optimism to our last days – looking back with either satisfaction or disappointment, or a mixture of the two.
And time is likewise a factor for society. To think of an ideal way for humans to live together in peace and prosperity is difficult enough. That is like our youthful aspiration – and often the aspect of utopia that people think of as naïve. But to make a society that is resilient in the long-term – through changes in culture, changes in economic conditions, changing environmental conditions, changing international relations – well, that’s another thing altogether.
Society, of course, does not face an inevitable decline of old age and death. There are always new generations of people coming up to replace those who are lost. But still there is a particular kind of care needed for both individuals and human societies in general. Indeed care for the elderly and for everyone else has a special place in society at large. It is that aspect of society that is so often hidden and so often provided for free. Without care the world of consumer capitalism would collapse!
For our parents, and other folk we may know, we need to remember that great legacy in their lives – those hopes and dreams of their youth. For society, can we likewise cherish all those dreams of utopian futures that we all share when we reflect on the state of the world?
And for both the elderly person and the mature society we can say there is the task of ensuring that their lives have not been lived in vain – that we are proud sons and daughters and also proud citizens.
To abandon these things is to shut off all possibilities – both individually and culturally. It is to say life is not worthwhile. The glass is half-empty. There is no point in trying. Things will never change.
I hope things will not be this way. I hope we can always say there is hope! Another pudding is possible! Another world is possible!
