Do You Ever Grow Up?

Do you ever grow up in the eyes of your parents?  I am just shy of fifty three years old and when I visit my parents, at times I feel I have been catapulted back to the era of  Saturday Night Fever as the Bee Gees sang Staying Alive while the lights twinkled off the disco ball.  Other days, my time capsule travels all the way back to Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

I am sure it is not intentional, it is just I will always be a child in their eyes. Yesterday as I finished my blog about curfews, I shared my story with Dad.  He has either forgotten the challenges I placed on my Mother’s platter or he was never a part of my life.  But I know differently.  My Mother was the disciplinarian.  I recall one evening as she was ranting and raving about my inability to abide by the rules of curfew, my Father entered the room and wanted to know what was going on.  Mother went on to say, “YOUR daughter (I guess she had forgotten she carried me for 9 months) does not understand there is a curfew and she needs to do as she is told!”  Dad, looked at my Mother as though she had just announced she was the Virgin Mary, “She’s a kid, let her have some fun.” The gates of hell opened upon my father as the wrath of the Virgin Mary turned toward him like a category five hurricane.  He didn’t stand a chance.

But after I had written my blog on curfews, he chuckled as I read it to him.  I left to run errands afterwards and he left for the doctor. He was home within the hour.  I was still out.  I was headed to the store to purchase what I needed to paint their bathroom.  I was distracted on my journey back home by stores that were calling my name.  I stopped, I browsed, I was in no hurry, I am on vacation, but as I pulled in to the drive way, my father was coming out to greet me.  He helped me carry my bags into the house.  Mother was sitting on her throne; I could hear her as I rounded the corner to the kitchen, “When you aren’t coming right back, you need to call!” 

Here we go again. I looked at her and sarcastically replied, “When was the curfew reinstated?” She looked at me and I knew she was not concerned.  Dad stood by as she told me, “Your dad was worried sick about you.” Without skipping a beat, I responded, “I’ll be sure to call when I am out next time.”

This was not a plea of my Mothers, if it was I’d have blown her off.  It was my Dad.  In the last few years he has started to become forgetful and the early stages of dementia are settling in. He never worried about us kids.  He has always been so laid back and carefree, but this disease is slowly turning him into a man I am not familiar with.  He was worried and wanted my Mother to call me and see if I was OK.  She reminded him I was 50 years old and he didn’t need to worry, I could take care of myself.  But that didn’t stop him from worrying.  He was relieved to see me return home and I was touched that he was concerned.

 But it reminded me of all the times my Mother sat home waiting for me to return and watched the clock tick past my curfew.  Not knowing where I was and in a time that cell phones had only been a dream and not a reality, she was left to wonder if I was safe or not.  I pondered why it did not touch my heart then like it did today, when my Dad was the one that was worried.

As the afternoon wore on, I had finished painting the bathroom and was preparing to get ready to go to dinner.  My Mother has asked me for some time now to stop coloring my hair.  I don’t know why this bothers her as she did it for years, but I decided this visit I’d let my hair go to show her how much she had contributed to my aging process.

She didn’t mention it when I arrived and I had to point it out to her.  She laughed and said she had noticed.  I told her I could hardly wait to color it and so today I did.  My Mother is in the third stage of kidney failure and it is very difficult for her to stand as her feet and legs are swollen from the water retention.  But as I stood at the kitchen sink, she felt compelled to tell me how to rinse my hair and even got up to rinse it for me.

Memories rushed back to when I was a little girl and she’d wash my hair in the kitchen sink. Forty-five years have come and gone and this woman still flooded my ears with water. I felt like I was drowning as she wielded the spray nozzle with the power of an armored knight.  I had to ask her to step back and let me be. But she continued to hover over me like a Mother Hen.  As I rose from the sink, she was trying to wipe the dye from my ears and forehead.  Inside memories just kept flooding me of my childhood. She took the towel from me and continued to wipe my face and ears and told me, “Be sure to wash your ears with soap when you shower.”  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

I’m not sure, but maybe when I walk into their home, I leave my big girl pants at the back door and jump into my Depends sending the message that I Depend on them to still guide me.  It doesn’t matter that I have been independent from them since I was 18 when my Mother laid a newspaper on the table and told me she found an apartment that I could afford and I needed to move.  She still tells me how to cook, do dishes and last night started to instruct me on how to paint.  I have painted more homes than my parents have owned and they’ve owned a lot and even though they know I am capable of performing these tasks, the urge is there to direct me.

I remind my Mother daily now as she shares her frustration with me over my Father’s loss of memory, she will miss those repeated conversations when they are no longer there and she will cry for the days that he sat there filling “her space” with worry over my whereabouts, I must remember that I will miss these days that my parents shared their wisdom with me.