Doctor Dinners

Last night, Jack had another Doctor Dinner. (I've written about previous Doctor Dinners here.) Generally, I loathe and despise these events. As the trailing spouse, my role is ambiguous. Part of it is: "Hey, we want to invite your better half to dinner and we'd look like a jackass if we didn't invite you!" The other part is "Hey! There are going to be a bunch of other spouses there and we decided we couldn't have just one spouse, so invited them all!"

This Doctor Dinner was at one of my husband's colleague's home. Melvin is an executive at the hospital, and was hosting two physicians from Kobe, Japan to visit Seattle. I had met the doctor and his wife at a fundraiser a few years ago, but I haven't seen him since. While Jack doesn't work with this guy closely enough to have direct experience, rumor on the street is the host is extremely difficult to work for. 

The short version of what I was up against: The host is an asshole and the guests of honor won't speak English. And I couldn't cheat and read the menu ahead of time online and pre-plan my meal because this was going to be at someone's home. Oh my god this was going to suck. Why do I agree to these things? If I were a novelist writing about this, I'd have to ask the question: what is at stake?

1. My pride
2. Three hours of my life that I can't get back.
3. My pride

Since my last dinner, I've adopted the strategy of talk to the other non-physicians at the event. Sometimes this can be challenging since doctors marry other doctors. The trailing spouse could be a geneticist or endocrinologist versus a normal person. This strategy was going to be hard given the other guests might not speak English. 

Given the track record of most of the physician leaders and executives, my pre-dinner guess was that Melvin was on wife number four. I was pleasantly surprised when I got there that he and his current wife have lived in their house for thirty years. It was rather shocking, in fact. Linda, his wife, was remarkably nice, considering all of the gossip said her husband was a jerk.

Aside from Linda, there was other non-physician spouse at the event. He is in tech and we discussed work before he had to go off and chase his twenty month old daughter.

That left me with the non-English speakers.

One of the doctor's from Japan brought his mother along on the trip, along with his wife, his five year old son, and his mother-in-law. I introduced myself to the grandmother, who spoke about as much English as I speak French, which was great. Tokiko said when she went to the market, the checkout person spoke so fast, she couldn't understand a word the woman said. I laughed and said the same thing happened to me when I went to France. I would put together a great sentence in French, and they would talk back to me as if I were fluent. (And correct my grammar. Gotta love the French for that!) I guess that was better than the sales person just jumping to English, but still. I could understand this woman's struggle. 

I was patient as Tokiko asked me questions. Her English was very good. When dinner was served, I sat down next to her. I was the only American at one of the tables with one of the Japanese families. I figured that was my job, right? To entertain these people who came from a few thousand miles away and make them feel welcome. 

Tokiko was delightful. She asked me if I ever ate "orange raspberries." No, I have only seen them, but never ate them. Next time I see them at the Market, I'll have to try them. She talked about the hot springs in Kobe and asked me about earthquakes. She had never eaten a meal "American Style" aka a buffet. Do we do this all of the time when we have dinner parties? 

After we began to eat, Melvin joined our table. I maintained my strategy of talking to the non-doctors, even if it meant struggling to converse with someone whose language I don't speak. If Tokiko can try to speak English, the very least I could do would be to be patient and listen. This dinner was probably much harder for her than for me, after all.

My favorite part of the meal was when this sixty- or seventy-something woman took a picture of her dessert, likely to post on social media. The pound cake with raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and whipped cream made a cute picture. She looked a little embarrassed that she was photographing her food until I gave her a thumbs up. Then she giggled, and asked her son to take a picture of the two of us.

At dinner, Melvin was actually nice. He smiled and was polite and cleared everyone's plate from the table when we were done eating. Maybe he was nice under Linda's watchful eye, or maybe he was playing nice for the international guests. Either way, he was far more civilized than advertised.

I realized my non-position at these dinners actually gives me power: the power to ignore. I didn't have to suck up to Melvin like everyone else at the hospital does. Because I wasn't sucking up to Melvin, there was no reason for him to be a louse. I could easily give all of my attention to the charming and funny Japanese woman sitting next to me. 

And I did. And I had a very nice time.