Home from my visit home. Or -- back in Glendale, CA after ten days visiting fam in Farmington Hills, MI where the air is smogless but fetid. Fireflies, mosquitoes, long sweaty days caught in the sticky strands of the family web. Watching my parents being erased right off the page.
Momba nearly blind no longer reads novels, can barely get through the Times. Tentative gestures, unfocused. Even her handwriting has gone small and spidery. Poppa so thin his pacemaker pokes through his shirt. Each with an array of illnesses and worn out parts, but glad to be alive and glad to have us there.
Sobering. Not only watching my once powerful parents diminish and fade, but all the other history and chills of a visit home. There are so many more dead people there. Some who I keep forgetting have died in my absence, seem to die all over again every time I visit home. Others who were once old it turns out I've now outlived. Plus, an ex husband. The road not taken.... well taken, but median jumped, U turn pulled.
Anyway, in spite of the insult I could NOT risk letting my old deaf, blind, frail, hesitant, parents drive me or my kids around, so we seized their keys --- and smashed up their Lincoln on a round -about.
Oops!
3 comments:
I will return for a home visit next week to Seattle where hopefully it will be cooler weather. My step-mother is losing her hearing more and more and I get to hear the same stories over and over and over again. I will be making a stop to offer condolences to child hood friends whose father just died at age 97. That said, I can't wait to visit! I'll love every minute because time never stands still! Glad ur back A! Keep up the good Blog work!
Dang, you put things nicely (even the un-nice things).
Anonymous is me, Lisa G., because I cannot figure how to post a comment otherwise.
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