Finding Your Way Home

 I used to fall in love twice a month.  Every other weekend, without fail, it happened. And always with the same man. Luckily it was the man I was – and am – married to.

The trigger was my husband’s bi-monthly call to his father.  For an hour I’d hear laughter and tenderness as he filled his dad in on the latest news:  kids’ accomplishments, work successes, things that would make his dad proud and give him something to brag to his friends about.  Glowing summaries commonly reserved for holiday letters and reunion bios.  And, eventually, elderly parents. 

As a stand-alone event it was pretty sweet.  The thing that really moved me, though, was that my husband’s relationship with his father was not exactly storybook.  His father was an angry man who took out his frustrations on his children.  Criticism, abuse and fear were constant members of the family. It’s a miracle that my husband grew up to be the gentle man he is.

In spite of the history between them, he called.  In spite of having become a father and realized the power of words and actions in forming a child’s character, he called.  He chose the high road, stayed in touch, called his father regularly and gave him an hour that would keep him going until the next call.  

It was not a choice everyone would make, understandably, given the past.  But he did.  And as I overheard pieces of the conversation, I would feel that delicious feeling of loving someone where your body feels warm and soft and your heart feels like it’s expanding to its limits.

It was also a poignant lesson in sticking with something or someone no matter how hard, no matter how many times you get rebuffed or discouraged and no matter how angry it makes you.  Some people in our lives are toxic and should avoided.  But if you find you care enough to want to know why a person is the way they are; if you have even an inkling that there is a good soul underneath the prickles and barbs; and especially if this person is a one and only in your life, then it’s worth the work to find your way back home.

Changing Places - Sort of...

I have heard that this day would come. The role-reversal. The day when we, as adult children, would care for our aging parents. But I could not imagine my parents ever needing help from me. Not my strong, funny, surgeon father, unwavering in his convictions, his intelligence, his “dad-ness.” And certainly not my beautiful, smart, energetic mother who ran a family of nine with a firm and loving hand, who had all the answers and who invented the phrase, “my way or the highway.”  My parents would just keep going until they dropped.  If they dropped.  It seemed to me that they could live forever. I hoped so.

But here I am, on a plane, on my way to DC.  My father is housebound with Parkinson’s syndrome and dementia. He needs to be fed, dressed, and much to his horror if he were fully conscious of it, occasionally changed and cleaned. 

My mother, recovering from leg surgery, cannot be on her feet for long periods of time. She can’t cook or clean or care for Dad as she has, amazingly, done for years. So my sisters and I are rotating in to help out for a week at a time, along with aids (who have become like family members) who come in to do the moving and lifting and the really hard stuff. 

My job will be to shop, cook, clean, feed Dad, help my mother bathe and take her to doctor appointments and church. When was the last time I helped someone bathe? Fed someone? Did laundry for anyone other than myself? Drove anyone to a doctor appointment?  That’s right – when my children were…children. So, yes, the time has come. I just didn’t know it would feel like this.