Getting better at Living with Alf

It isn’t always easy living with Alf and I know he would say it isn’t always easy living with us. Before Alf came to live with us, I remember him suggesting that we discuss how it would all work before he moved in. We never actually had that conversation. As it happens, I don’t believe we would have been equipped enough to have had that talk then as it is difficult to anticipate how the ebb of one person’s life can imbalance the flow of another when suddenly put under one roof. It takes patience, understanding, empathy, love, acceptance and practice. It takes time. It takes friends who remind me how lucky I am that Alf has enough wits about him still to deliver the repeated smart-ass remarks.

I’m slowly learning not to sweat the small stuff or I wont be able to have his ear for the things that really matter to me.

My husband is learning to abandon his methodical and somewhat measured approach to fixing up the house and garden in order to occasionally work on some quick jobs that Alf finds gratifying. They are fundamentally different, my father and my husband. For my husband, think planning, aesthetics, pernickety and the speed of molasses going uphill. For Alf, it is all about practicality and aesthetics don’t get a look in. Think go, go, go, do, make do, oh shit, huh, ah well, never mind, done. I can imagine that in my husbands engineering career, his particular tendencies were crucial. I can equally see that living on a farm would require Alf’s alternative skills.

Alf is learning that he can’t say “Speak English will ya” to people who’s first language isn’t English without the rest of us taking a sharp intake of breath and wanting to hide under the table. I register 9.5 on the AAA scale and so does everyone else, even Lovely Lady I will wager who has previously seemed unshockable. Thankfully, the waiter on the receiving end of this comment is extremely gracious and he accepts Alf’s rambling explanation. Alf says it is out of habit, meant as a joke as he has, for years said it to people with colloquial accents (to a friend who is from Tennessee; to my husband who is from Glasgow). He has not given thought to how much worse that is for actual foreigners. He tells me he is learning. I take comfort in remembering the words of some comedian or another who said that it was a good thing discrimination doesn’t carry a prison sentence otherwise that would be where our parents and grandparents would dwell.

Alf misses his US friends albeit he is making friends here in Jersey. People are slowly coming to understand him, he says. He has commented that he can’t spread his wings very wide on a 9 x 5 island. When challenged this seems to be about driving on an open road, something he has always enjoyed in abundance. True, I think. Take some trips I say. Take the car on the ferry to England and visit family and friends.

We have introduced a family breakfast on a Saturday morning to talk about what’s going on for each of us. I hope that it will keep us aligned and feeling like we are on the same team. I have asked Alf outright if he would not try to wind me up further for his own entertainment when I am already under pressure. To save my husband’s sanity, Alf needs to take on board that he can’t cope with too many people in the kitchen at once. Family and friends all know and accept this. We tease him, naturally, but we respect his kitchen quirk and when it comes to the final stages of cooking and serving, we file out. We love him and we don’t want him to feel stressed. Alf loves us but he tends to dig his heels in. He feels he doesn’t need to answer to anyone at his age.

Speaking of Alf’s age, since my last chapter, he has reached the milestone of 80 years old. We are all basking in the afterglow of a full-on party weekend. He has said how lucky he feels to have such a wonderful family and great friends. He isn’t short of friends here really. Our friends are Alf’s friends.