- Share This Post
- submit
- 0
-
Sparkle (0)
The thing about parents is that they have a tendency to go off without telling you where they’re going.
I put my 80-something parents on the plane to somewhere in Florida yesterday. I admit, I’m not big on Florida geography. I know Rebecca lives there, it’s warm and sunny in February and it’s where everyone went in the 1960’s morality tale, “Where the Boys Are”. If you have a cell phone number, what more do you need to know about a place?
I tucked my parents into their wheelchairs at the US Air gate and the attendants assured me they would escort my p’s all the way to their seats. They wouldn’t even have to get out and take their shoes off for security, which is worth being 80 something for, if you ask me. I kissed them good-bye and the last thing I said was, “Call me when you get there.”
That was 10 a.m.
At 5 p.m. my younger brother phoned me to ask if they’d actually gotten on the flight. I said they had. He sounded worried. He said, “Do you think they made it okay?” I assured him. I said, “They’re probably still alive because if they were dead, we’d have heard by now.” He understood that logic and, having registered the fact that they were safe, proceeded to get really mad at my parents. “Don’t you think they should have called to let us know?” This is how we Irish deal with concern—we get pissed off. I said, “I’m thinking this is payback for the years they spent parenting six adolescents.”
At what point did our parents turn into our teenagers??
They’re much older than Dennis Hopper so I know they’re not being influenced by that retirement ad he’s doing—the one he’s sitting in the middle of a highway on a red chair and you’re compelled to keep scrutinizing the image to figure out if he’s stoned or not. At least, that’s what my sister and I did.
I totally suspect my parents are having as much fun as my own teenagers. Like Wally, they’re living in a lovely community, surrounded by people their own age. They never have to turn the thermostat down, so they can heat the whole outdoors if they want to (I know my father has waited his whole life to be able to do this), and they’re served three squares a day. I actually got confused when I went to visit this retirement center about a month after Wally went to college, and ended up asking the housing director what the meal plan was like.
Like the Snapper, my parents have the tendency to socialize constantly and not check in with me concerning their whereabouts. I get text messages from the Snapper when he’s driving home, five minutes before his Cinderella license kicks in, the way I get phone calls from my parents when they need a ride to the airport. I only know where they all are when they’re in transit, unless they get sick.
For instance, today the Snapper is home sick in bed. Ironically with the same flu that grounded my parents last weekend (temporarily). It started last night,
