Business With Pleasure | 2gether AU

01 - The Party Begins!

The only birthday party I'd ever had was that memorable occasion fifteen years ago when my mother decided to throw a joint birthday party for all three of her children.

Our birthdays were about six months apart and the party was held on a day that was somewhat midway.

It made no sense and yet that's what was decided.

Grave discussions were held on how many and who to call. Dad took an advance on his pay, Mae slaved for a week cooking for the party, I cleaned the house from end to end and Ren-Pear went door to door delivering invitations.

We bought new clothes, all five of us. I could not remember any other time we got new clothes when it was not Christmas or a school uniform or a case where the shirt became too small for heads and arms to fit through.

At five p.m. on the day in question, amidst the much-debated guests, the carefully chosen dresses and the cheap but fancy decorations, Mae had a stroke and keeled over face-first into the cake. She did not get up again.

It was enough to put me off celebrations for a lifetime. In fact, it was enough to put anyone who attended that party off birthdays and cakes for a while.

The funeral happened the very next day since the guest list and catering were already in place.

Dad was one of those low-key people. You know, the kind of guy who was meek and unassuming and quiet, who came and went and no one really noticed, who sat in a corner of the room and blended into the furniture and was at perpetual risk of being sat on.

He spoke in a soft, tremulous voice. In fact, he barely spoke at all, unless it was absolutely required.

The days after my mother died, he went about looking lost and disoriented, as though not quite sure how to proceed.

He was vaguely aware that there were three more people left in the family, but didn't know what to do about them. He seemed hugely relieved when I decided to take matters into my more capable ten-year-old hands.

He didn't have any friends that we knew of, and even our neighbours had always known him only as "Amelia's husband".

Being the people person that he was, the job that he chose for himself, one that really tapped his social skills, was being an insurance salesman.

I don't know how he made any sales at all. The only rational explanation for the fact that we had food on the table and a roof over our heads was that people took policies from him out of pity, unless he had some killer charm that only came into play when he was pitching for the latest plan.

So imagine my mind-numbing surprise when a year and some months ago, he hung up his badly scuffed faux leather slip-ons after thirty years of peddling policies and decided to put all his savings into starting, of all things, a party planning outfit.

Of course with his rich experience of co-organizing the sum total of one party that we had ever had, which ended with Mae's faceprint on the cake, event organization was the natural choice of career change for him.

Needless to say, he failed spectacularly.

He somehow scored a couple of engagement ceremonies and an anniversary or two, mostly from acquaintances who took pity on him (probably the same kind-hearted mugs who also bought policies from him).

Even our neighbourhood's X-Mas Nite party went to someone else, though Dad offered "special rates and services".

I worked with Dad for all of ten days.

By the end of the tenth day, he realized I had no patience with him. Before the end of the first day, I realized it was up to me to feed the family because my father was sure to declare bankruptcy.