“What’s with the two of you?” I ask, irritated.
Mum tries to explain. “Jemma, you give much too importance to physical possession. You intend love and relationships to be the material confinement of your partner.”
I look at them, increasingly puzzled.
Dad gives his precious contribution. “That’s right, Jemma, what your mother is trying to say is that, back in the seventies, we had free love. It wasn’t rare to have even five or six partners.”
“Group sex…” she continues.
My dad smiles at her. “I could achieve physical pleasure with anyone, but your mother is the only person who gives me spiritual ecstasy…”
“Yes, it’s the same for me with your father. Monogamy is very restrictive in the way you intend it.”
“For God’s sake, please!” I try and chase away the image of my parents as twenty year olds having orgies in the seventies.
“Carly, perhaps she needs some help to calm down.”
“You’re right, Vance, I’ll go make something hot for her.”
My dad puts John Lennon’sImagineon the record player, while my mum comes back from the kitchen with a tray and three steaming cuppas.
I take a sip but I spit it out immediately.
“Jemma, sweetie, be careful, it’s very hot! Be patient!” My dad comments.
“What did you put in here, Mum? It’s a marijuana infusion, isn’t it?”
She shrugs and then makes a hand gesture, bringing her thumb and index finger close to each other. “Just a wee bit…”
“Mum! Camomile would be more than enough to make me relax!”
“It made you sleep so well when you were little!”
I love my parents, but I can’t spend too much time with them. I stand up and head to my cubbyhole.
“Where are you going?”
“Downstairs. I’ve got a headache. I’ll have a shower and go to bed.”
“I made hummus for dinner!”
“I’m tempted but no, thanks.”
*
My mum was raised by my grandmother Catriona to become a lady in British high society and marry a nobleman. Her family, which was wealthy but had no title, aspired to climb the social ladder, and the matter of nobility was very important to my grandmother.
When my mum came of age, a titled husband-to-be was chosen for her, but the marriage never happened because while she was visiting a friend in Southampton, she secretly went to a concert where she met my dad. They got married and went back to London together, to my grandparents’ fury. For long standing manufacturers of weapons and military supplies, having a pacifist daughter who married a long haired hippy is a tragedy. She was immediately repudiated, so they lived in a kibbutz in Wadi Ara for a while, then in a commune in Goa, and they returned to England just when she got pregnant.
My dad is adjat an independent rock radio station, he usually wears bell-bottoms and ties his grizzled hair in a ponytail. My mum gives holistic massages to rebalance chakras and prepares natural remedies with the herbs she grows on her terrace. They’re hippies from top to toe, and I was raised in total freedom. They never scolded me, because they’re against punishment. Sometimes I wonder how I survived until twenty-five.
For instance, my parents were sure they would have a boy, so they picked the name ‘Jimi’, after Jimi Hendrix. Later, they were told I was a girl, so ‘Jimi’ became ‘Jemma’.
By ‘hippy’, I mean the above: drinking, eating and smoking marijuana is part of the daily routine of my family home. In addition, their car is a cheerful melon coloured van; they’re nudists and I regularly went to nudist campsites and beaches as a child; they have notv; they’re vegans, ecologists, animalists and antimonarchists.
If I can say ‘they are’ and not ‘we are’, it’s because the best part of having hippy parents is that I’ve always been free to choose. So, when I was fourteen, I ate at McDonalds after a Backstreet Boys concert. And I declared eternal love to beef and cheese.
Unfortunately, on the matter of monogamy and cheating – at least from a physical point of view – I can’t count very much on them, given that they took part in the sexual revolution.
