Something has happened to me that I never saw coming. I don't know when or how but somehow my parents and I have had a role reversal occur.
I remember the first time it reared it's ugly head. I had been out late, very late and well, I may have had a few adult beverages. Or a dozen, but that's not important. Having been asleep (or passed out) only a couple of hours the phone rings at 7am. Not coherent enough to screen the call I pick it up.
"Hello" I manage to mumble.
"OH Good you're up!" says my Mother. "You need to talk to your father".
Talk to my father, how did she know what I did last night? That girl said she was 18!
"He's up on the roof again!" she continued.
"Call the fire department to get him down Mom. They can do it for cats." I managed to say through the throbbing and spinning that was my head.
"That's not funny! He's trying to fix the roof again and I told him we'd pay somebody to do it". "Can't you fix it next time you're in town?"
"At Christmas? You want me on the roof on Christmas Eve when it's thirty below friggin' zero?"
Don't get me wrong. My parents are likely the nicest people you will ever meet. We do the holidays thing and even meet up for a week once a year at the beach. They are in Roanoke, Va and I am in Atlanta and I like my 400 mile buffer zone. My brother lives in town but has wisely made his own buffer zone by playing up his grumpy dispostion. My little sister lives in town but I guess me being the oldest or something makes me the "go to" guy.
My father will call to complain about my mother and my mother will call to complain about my father or sister and so on and so on and so on. The last one was that she wanted me to find out who my brother was dating. Why she couldn't ask him I have no clue. But...
My father had the good fortune and smarts to retire with a pension almost as much as his pay while still young enough to enjoy it after 30 years. 30 years at the same job? I can't even imagine. Retiring? They keep raising the retirement age every damned month now it seems. I'll be 90 and still working. I know just what job it'll be too. A Walmart Greeter.
"Need a cart?" I"ll say through my ill-fitting false teeth with the gentle rustle of my adult undergarments swooshing as I walk, my feet shuffling two inches a step.
My mom still works though she doesn't have to, they have no bills at all, but she still has this fear that they will run out of money any day. I suspect one day we'll discover a hundred grand stuffed in a mattress somewhere. But once a month I get the "I'm quitting my job" call. Of course she never quits.
But they are good people and I know that I am lucky to have them. We have a good time the four or five times a year we hang out. But yes thank God for the buffer zone.
I wonder if it will get worse as they get older.
"Honey, will you talk to your father, he's peeing in the corner again!"
Luckily I also have "she who somehow tolerates my bizarre personality" to take some of the calls as well from time to time.
Speaking of which, I would like to extend to her highness a very happy birthday today. OH NO THE BIG 3-0!. Agghhh!