This Khmer New Year you won’t see me ‘round the traps reenacting Beyonce’s Halo through my own unique brand of interpretive dance. I’m as disappointed as you are, but needs must, and this festive break I’m boarding the jazz clogs with my personal cobbler while me and Hubster head off to Dementia Village to visit my very good friends, The Parents.
It’s not the Dementia Village per se. That’s an actual one near Amsterdam where maybe one day a bunch of Dutch architects was probably chillaxing ‘round the communal meerschaum with half a pound of sweet Blueberry Kush and, cranial light bulbs ablaze, thought, “Well Hellootjes! Wouldn’t it be swell to build a hamlet that looks and works like the olden days where residents are pathologically forgetful old timers who think it’s still 1967, and live-in healthcare professionals dress up as the postman or the tobacconist?” Kind of like the Truman Show but with rainbow bicycles and a shitload of floor-to-ceiling honey pine cabinetry. Nothing smells like wee and the oldies spend their twilight years feeling right at home comparing snert recipes and enjoying the odd hip-cracking key party at shuffleboard nights down at the local windmill like everyone else does in Holland apparently. There are no frantic calls to the cops if grootvader wanders off, since he’s free to totter around forgetfully and safely under the watchful eyes of covert carers while they whip up his poffertjes or deliver milk bottles to his doorstep with a cheery wave. Bingo, alles kits achter de rits. Except for the name. You’d have thought those toasty bouwmeesters might have leveraged the gift of visionary genesis a bushel of stonking Alaskan Thunderfuck bestows and fangled something at least a little euphemistic. But it’s a small niggle. Some of my best acquaintances are Dutch, and I applaud them – for this and for having the hottest airport security staff in the world. And also for brilliantly, though again possibly under the influence of a cheeky kilo of Illawarra Stank, inventing adult hide-and-seek in IKEA stores. When I’m back home we also play hide and seek in IKEA, but only because Mum gets confused with the shortcuts and Dad gets bored around about the mattress section, tucks up under a Hönsbärand and drops off listening to the news.
I know I’m a whiny middle class blouse, but I can’t help feeling resentful that perhaps I’m becoming my mother. It would be fine if she were a 23-year-old Brazilian beach volleyball player named Heidi. You don’t see those chicas dropping plastic in the sensible pants department or comparing orthotics at U Care. They’d not fret about whether the iron was still on after they’d gone to Panda to get some sausages and have to run back up two flights to check and then forget why they were standing in the kitchen wheezing like a 200 fag a day fucking walrus and looking just about as attractive. They probably don’t even have an iron since they only ever wear lycra kinis and god knows mum hasn’t been within Zimmer distance of a bikini since 1955.
As the years stagger past I do worry about what’ll happen when the lights are on but no one’s home. I’ll probably never have to sell fluorescent palm frond animals on a stick for 50 cents each at the Monivong KK intersection when I’m 70. Or push a cart full of stinking shellfish through the baking April streets when I should be feet up on the Barcalounger® watching Downton with a nice iced cuppa cha. In life’s big lucky draw I’ll probably never be that tiny, right-angled ancient in the spotless white blouse and neat sarong begging for pennies out front of the Museum.
Thank god I married a man half my age. If, in another 15 years or so when my brainbox shrinks to the size of a walnut, and fingers crossed he’s still compos after all those afternoons down the petanque club with Johnny Walker and his klatsch of CharmingVille armchair oracles, I’m looking to him to squire me out for bubble tea or wheel me and my oxygen tent out for a groundhog afternoon of G&Ts by the pool. It’s not Dementia Village, but as assisted living facilities go, there’s no place like CharmingVille.