International Dad

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International Dad

October 2008

My parents had lavish dinners, my brother had New Year’s Eve parties, my children had their friends over. The family homestead has been

The Fun House
By Glen Mezher

         From a very early age, I experienced the family home as a warm friendly place where everyone was welcome and where entertaining was the order of the day. My parents loved having people at the house. Being part of a small ethnic community, this was easy: Various families would often come over for meals. But they didn’t stop there; they often would have very large dinner parties, sometimes on the spur of the moment and sometimes to host a special occasion. I remember the time when Vic Toweel, a member of the Lebanese community, won a World Boxing Title. This was very special, indeed, and when he came on a visit to Durban, my parents put on a lavish dinner for a hundred people.
         I was at boarding school much of my youth, so I missed many of these festivities. But I had my own way of contributing. When I was older and played cricket and rugby, my school team frequently travelled to Durban for games. I would often bring the entire team over after the game. On a couple of occasions, I even brought both teams. My mother never acted surprised. She would just tell us to amuse ourselves for a few minutes while she went to the corner store to buy a few things.
My elder brother added to the festivities. When he was in his late teens, he started organising a New Year’s Eve party. Over the years this grew and grew and people would start asking in October if they could come. The house grew to be quite famous for all its gatherings and, to this day, as recently as last month, seeing someone on the streets of Durban would get them to stop and point at me, clicking their fingers and their tongues as they tried to remember my name … and finally come out with “58 Gordon Rd!”
         Times change, and I have never been able to totally replicate that atmosphere, although we still had lots of people come for meals and the children constantly had their friends over. As my eldest daughter says of our place in Palo Alto, California, “Ours was the fun house that all my friends wanted to come to; the house with Astroturf, loud music, a menagerie of animals, a hot tub outside under the redwoods, and a feast of some kind or another.”
         History repeated itself in England, without the Astroturf or hot tub, but with a pool (in which only the children were brave enough to swim) and a large, rather wild garden. My middle daughter was the gregarious one and the organizer of parties and gatherings of friends. My son was rather shy in his early years and preferred to have small groups of friends over. But the garden and woods were wonderful for children and there would forever be groups of teenagers wandering around in the woods or building canals down the edge of the long sloping lawn.
         At one stage I got worried about my son not sleeping over at friends’ houses. I asked him why, one day, and he said: “They do invite me over, but then they ask if we can stay at our house instead because it’s so much more fun.”

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September 2008

Love of learning has played a large part in my life,

Thanks to My Father
by Glen Mezher

         My love of education and the many joys it has brought me over the years was inspired by my father who, as a ten-year-old boy, was put on a boat bound for South Africa along with his elder brother. The boat trip took place in 1905. There was little or no formal education in Lebanon at that time, and he received not much more in South Africa; such was my family’s struggle to make a life for themselves in their new country. Even as an adult, my father read newspapers with difficulty and writing was a skill he never mastered.
        Somehow though, or perhaps for this reason, he became absolutely passionate about education. He realized that this was the way of the future, the way he wanted his children to grow up. Nothing was more important to him than the education of his children. We never went to the best schools – that wasn’t necessary. But we had to be given every chance to be educated.
         He was a distant father, a large man with a bad leg. So playing sports together was out of the question. We connected only through our discussions about my education (and Lebanese food, of course). When I was on holiday from boarding school, he never tired of talking to me about school, the subjects I took and the sports I played. To this day I cringe at the memory of how he would get me to bring out my school reports and read them to his friends when they came over for dinner.
         As I grew older, I realized how much pleasure he derived from my school successes and I saw the pride he felt when I did especially well. Sadly he died just as I started my university studies but, by then, his passion had transferred to me and I was hooked for life. My mom continued in the same vein. I was allowed to continue my studies at the university for however long I wanted, and there was never any pressure to go out and get a job. I cannot express how grateful I am to both of them for this gift.
         As I look back over the years, I realize how important a part education or, more accurately, the love of learning has played in my life. It has been a cornerstone, something I just keep on doing. It hasn’t been for knowledge’s sake; it’s about languages, different cultures – even cooking. And it’s this love of learning that I have tried to pass on to my children. My eldest daughter remembers “endless hours of you holding up that tennis ball with a flashlight shining on the globe to show me the simple workings of the solar system.”
         Oh, yes, there were the evenings fraught with tension over homework, study, assignments and so on. But my priority was always to get behind the facts and stimulate the interest and desire. I didn’t always succeed. My second daughter says, “School wasn’t high on my list of priorities, but I always knew I wanted to go to university.”
         My son, the youngest, had problems and struggled with dyslexia. He chose not to go to a university on leaving school. He has drawn a metaphor for me: “When I was young, I hated the taste or smell of coffee. Now, as an adult, it has become a daily essential, without which I cannot function.” Today he attends college in California and plans to go on to the university level next year.
         I wonder what the little boy on the boat would think of the train of events he set in motion.

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July 2008

Punishment always seemed barbaric and unjust to me. In my youth, discipline and punishment were regarded as

Two Separate Issues
By Glen Mezher

         I’m the wrong person to be talking about punishment: As a father, I’ve been very bad at it. My family has often told me so.
         You see, I went to boarding school in South Africa for ten years. I have many good things to say about the boarding-school life, but punishment is not one of them, not just because of its brutality and physical pain (and there was a good deal of that), but because it was often senseless.
The school was a Marist Brothers College, and there were two types of punishment. The first was group punishment: A hundred-odd boys (yes, boys only!) were punished because the Brothers could not trace the culprit of a wrong-doing and so indulged in a kind of group cleansing. Usually this meant sitting in a study-room for several hours during playtime – a sure way to sow rebellion in young men.
         The second form of punishment was individual: usually a good caning – six of the best for a serious offense. Here I faced a difficult choice. I was a good student, so it was fairly easy to keep out of trouble. But the boys kept score. And if you didn’t get caned for a while, they would start to pick on you … seriously. So, the choice was between getting caned at well-chosen intervals and be “one of the boys” or becoming a social outcast. The choice was easy. I learned less about the consequences of a misdemeanor – because the pain was short-lived – but I learned a lot about social integration.
         Perhaps, as far as punishment goes, I started off on the wrong foot as a child, but it had always seemed barbaric and unjust to me. How now to morph into the family disciplinarian? As you can imagine, I never really did. I remember very few specifics about the consequences I gave my children for their bad behavior; I am sure there is a very good psychological explanation for this suppression.
         Over the past years, I’ve come to realize that my children have very different, and usually much more accurate, memories of past events in our lives. So I decided to consult them on the issue. My eldest recalls “maybe the odd incident involving having to stay in my room all day, or the occasional smack with the back of a hand, or the back of a hairbrush.” Hairbrush?   Not me! This happened just after the hippie era, and it was not cool to be violent.
         My second eldest (eighteen years later) tells me that my occasional use of a belt “was good for us, because we learned that, if we got out of line, we would be punished. When I was a teenager you told me that I was old enough to take care of myself. It showed that you respected me, and it helped me respect you, too.”
         My youngest (the hippie period long past) remembers, “Punishment – the back of the hand or the belt – was to be avoided at all cost. Verbal punishment was like sitting through church. But a few words could drive it home, for example, ‘I am disappointed in you’ or ‘You have let me down.’ ”
         Looking back, I realize that discipline and punishment were regarded as two separate issues in my youth. Nowadays, talking to younger parents, it seems to me that discipline and punishment are more closely allied and punishment has become a more severe form of discipline. It’s a much healthier attitude.

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June 2008

Whether I ate outdoors with my Lebanese family in South Africa or with my American family in our English dining room, enjoying a meal has been very much

A Lively Social Experience
By Glen Mezher

        In my early years in South Africa, eating was divided into two distinct experiences. First there was my Lebanese family: father, mother and brother, where traditional food was the central focus and sitting down to dinner meant a delicious and satisfying meal. Being part of a small ethnic community, dining was very much a social experience. On Sundays after church, the community would gather at one family home or another and have lunch together – grownups, kids and all. The weather being what it is in South Africa, barbecues (or braais, as they are known) were very popular, but traditional foods held sway.
        The second experience was very different – boarding school – tasteless meals, overcooked and a mad scramble to claim your share (telescopic arms necessary). Nevertheless, still a very social experience with 60 kids in the same dining room.
        Later, after marriage and a first child, I moved to Brazil. On the social level, eating was even more of a family experience because Brazilians have such large, extended families. The Sunday meal was, again, the central attraction. The main course was usually feijoada, a stew of beans and all the parts of a pig that you can imagine. It was delicious in the extreme, but required a mandatory nap afterwards while the kids went off to create mayhem. The family experience continued at restaurants, and I was always amazed at how even posh restaurants coped with small children and never had any problems dealing with their tantrums. The service staff would even volunteer for impromptu babysitting.
        When I arrived in California in the late ’70s, everything changed. As a family, we experienced a food-culture shock, because food seemed more biological necessity than cultural entertainment. The family experience seemed less prominent and didn’t play quite the same central role. Eating out was a far more common practice than we had experienced before and, when friends wanted to get together, it was more frequently for dinner at a restaurant than dinner at home. Given the relatively high level of disposable income and the good weather, it is perfectly understandable; there are few things in life more enjoyable than having a delicious meal al fresco. Also, food in the home was frequently prepared and left for family members to eat on their way through to their next assignment, and entertaining guests at the dining table wasn't a very popular practice. Then, too, there was the matter of fast foods, something we had not come across before. So the dining experience was much more outside of the home than we were accustomed to.
        Finally, I ended up in England – where the weather changes everything. There is little opportunity to eat outside, except in the summer, and the local way of life does not include frequent visits to restaurants. So meals are usually taken in the dining room, family-style. Again, the big meal happens on Sunday: roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and vegetables. This meal is often maligned (the French call the English “les rosbifes”) but it can be delicious and comforting on a cold, wet day. A variation of the fast-food chains are the pubs. They are popular social-gathering places, but usually serve indifferent food – however, gastro-pubs that aim to improve the quality of the food are emerging. The English do have their own variety of fast food: the fish-and-chips shops. These local chippies are still very popular; the small village where I live boasts three of them. Sadly, though, you can’t buy them wrapped in newspaper any more.
        How has all this cultural diversity affected my family’s attitude to food? Not much, really, because food has remained very much the center of family life. The dynamics have changed a lot, though. As the children grew up, there was much more participation in the making of the food, not just the eating as in the old days. As a result, the children have become great cooks. Now there is a different dimension to dining because we’re spread all over the world, and there is the exchanging of recipes, talking (over Skype, of course) about recent restaurant experiences, great meals, delicious dishes, new tastes. And when we get together, we spend more time planning menus and selecting restaurants than any other activity. Food in my family is still a lively social affair, but it now has a more international flavor.

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I Am Glen Mezher
by Glen Mezher

I was born and raised in South Africa. I have a masters in physics from the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa, and a masters in business administration from The London School of Economics. Twice married and the father of three children, I have spent most of my adult life with my families, working in businesses both small and large in South Africa, Brazil, California and, currently, England.

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