For the first time in a long time, all five of us are home for supper on a Friday night. The middle one, back from university for the weekend, is appraising his knife and fork with suspicion.
“What do you think?” my wife says. “I got the whole service in the Christmas sales.”
I remember the experience of returning home at his age, to a slightly different home: new cutlery, furniture moved, a favourite mug disappeared. I remember going back one summer to find a new refrigerator in the kitchen and thinking: “Why didn’t they write?”
The novelty is mildly exciting, but it comes with a little charge of resentment: how dare they. The home of one’s memory – the one you get homesick for – does not readily admit alteration.
“Dunno,” he says. “They’re heavy.”
“I don’t mind the weight,” the oldest one says. “As long as the size is right.”
“The old ones aren’t gone,” my wife says. “They’re in the bottom drawer.”
“When I go to other people’s houses,” the oldest says, “I can’t really deal with their freaky three-tined forks.”
“Or, like, weird bowls,” the youngest says.
“When I came here from America, I had to learn all new spoon sizes,” I say.
“The right bowl size is crucial,” the oldest says. “Our bowls.”
“I definitely think cutlery shouldn’t be made from more than one thing,” says the middle one as he examines his new fork, which isn’t.
“No,” my wife says.
“We’ve absorbed all your weird taste restrictions,” the oldest says.
“That is pleasing,” my wife says.
“But our old knives were all made from two things,” I say. “Metal blade, fake bone handle.”
The middle one looks at me, and then shakes his head.
“Knives don’t count,” he says.
“And no salt shakers,” the oldest says, holding up our little ceramic salt vessel.
“One of you will inherit that,” my wife says. “It used to be my rabbit’s water bowl.”
“What about not saying living room?” the youngest one says.
“I accidentally said drawing room in front of someone the other day,” my wife says. “My mother said drawing room.”
“What are we supposed to say?” I say.
“Sitting room,” the middle one says.
“Oh yeah,” I say. It occurs to me that we’ve accidentally passed on a load of mild phobias and private snobberies as if they were a template for living. Long after our roles as parents and children have been discharged, we will still be bonded by these local rules and preferences.
“Your mother also maintains a ban on potted plants,” I say. “Which I’d never even heard of.”
“Cut flowers only?” the oldest says.
“Correct,” my wife says.
“By the way,” I say. “I have a strong objection to people pouring sugar into tea straight from the bag, which has never been officially recognised.”
“I don’t mind about that,” my wife says.
I pick up my fork and feel its strange weight. I realise that even our most dearly held family prejudices will probably dissolve in time; once you leave home you discover that many kind and decent people eat from absurdly big bowls. And after you’ve gone, you find your parents were never really bound by the restrictions they appeared to impose. They’ll buy any old forks, as long as they’re on sale.
“To be honest, I’ve never fully acclimatised to your British spoons,” I say. “It seems to me you’re missing an interim size.”
“What are you talking about?” my wife says.
I don’t say anything; I just reflect on the fact that for all these years I’ve unknowingly been helping myself to salt from a rabbit’s water bowl.
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