OPINION: Sunday lunch outing a good opportunity to get back to something close to normal
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A tiny bit of normality has returned.
As I write this, I am full of food having been for our first Sunday lunch out in four months.
A few years ago, we were trying to find a means for us to have a day out, and through a small brainwave and a long, long period of acclimatisation in slow, manageable increments, we got to a point where our boy could eat fish and chips at a select few restaurants.
This was life changing for us. Of course, we could take a packed lunch, and often did. But as he got older, we wanted to be able to sit as a family enjoying a meal together then continue with our activities.
The staff in these restaurants are very accommodating when we explain our special order to them (he doesn’t eat peas or have sauce and doesn’t like too many chips) and we have never felt uncomfortable. Some of the staff at the Beefeater and the Brewers Fayre in Inverness have become part of our support network to the extent that when our boy decided he wanted to go for a meal on his own with a friend last year, we were able to make this happen with some discrete help from one of our server friends.
So, it was with excitement (and a little bit of headline-driven trepidation) that we got dressed up for the first time in weeks and headed for Sunday lunch. Apparently, we were the first booking they took when they opened the system and the chap that spoke to me went to the rest of the staff immediately and announced that the Andersons were coming back!
And what a welcome we got. We were met with genuine warmth which we reciprocated having missed our friends and the food – you can’t cook a steak like that at home!
Of course, the restaurant looked different with the floor festooned in arrows and posters everywhere reinforcing the necessary restrictions. It was strange when the food and drinks were delivered at arm’s length to the end of the table for us to pass down to the boy,but it was just lovely to reclaim a family staple from the strange world that we have inhabited these last few months.
"In many ways he has grown independent of us at his own pace and has become a wonderful, polite, and charming young man that we are proud of every day. However, the rituals and routines that underpin this independence are essential and it has been exceedingly difficult for him to manage the changes that lockdown have forced upon him."
The afternoon was completed by our habitual wander round the Eastgate centre so our young man can get a fix of lifts – an obsession that has been kept in uncomfortable abeyance through will power and lack of an alternative.
He turned eighteen at the beginning of July – where did the time go! In many ways he has grown independent of us at his own pace and has become a wonderful, polite, and charming young man that we are proud of every day. However, the rituals and routines that underpin this independence are essential and it has been exceedingly difficult for him to manage the changes that lockdown have forced upon him.
It is swings and roundabouts though. For every lift he has been stopped from riding, for every new venue cancelled holidays have kept from us, the relief of not having to sit his last school exams is the counterbalance.
At least until the manufactured results come in next month.
Karen is Mum to an autistic teenager and campaigns for the rights of unpaid carers to be supported in their caring role and involved in the decisions that affect their lives and the lives of the people they care for. You can find her on twitter @Karen4Carers.
