Mood: Somber
Song: Caoineadh na Mara – Celtic Requiem
Units of Caffeine: 3
Days Until Vacation: 41
The Old Homestead
I am back from my trip to the Empire State and all I can say is that this past week has felt a bit surreal. My father was at the airport to greet me when I flew in late last Sunday night. It’s kind of funny – I wasn’t surprised by the fact that my mother wasn’t there to greet me as much as I was surprised that either of my parents were there at all. They both knew I was renting a car, so I was pretty much expecting to fly in; grab my car; drive to my parents’ house; let myself; have a drink and go to sleep. I didn’t even expect my parents to be awake when I got in. So, seeing my father at the airport was a nice surprise.
I got into the Saturn Ion rental and was immediately pissed off that some asshole designer in General Motors decided to put the speedometer, gas gauge, etc… in the middle of the dashboard. After years and years and years of conditioning the typical American motorist to look straight down, above the steering wheel – why on earth would anyone change the layout of the dash? It took a little getting used to, but then I turned on the radio to one of my favorite local radio stations and headed to my parents. As I was driving the all-too-familiar roads, it was hard to believe that I had been away for over two years. It also felt very strange that K wasn’t with me. We’re not attached at the hip or anything; that is to say, I don’t feel obligated to do everything I do with her – But I almost always travel with her; especially if it’s going back to our home state to visit; a city in which we both hold so many memories. And, as I was driving through my home town, it was just hard to think that I don’t live there anymore. That idea was cemented when I walked into my parents’ house. I initially wrote a passage about how much my parents’ house has changed over the years – but that’s not accurate. My parents are very resistant to change – they are very comfortable with how they live, no matter how uncomfortable it might be. I will say that the change that has occurred has come from their resistance to change, if that makes any sense at all. I guess the accurate description of my parents’ house would be “more of the same.” Growing up, my brother and I would always poke fun at the fact that my father never threw anything away. He had bookshelves, file cabinets and banker’s boxes full of everything and anything since 1960: from important financial records to small notes that my brother or I had written, reminding someone to pick up a quart of milk on the way home from work in 1982. The joke has now become an annoyance to anyone who steps into my parents’ house. And it’s not only my father, but my mother, (who is worse) at collecting things. They are the king and queen of all pack rats. Their house is cluttered to the point where one cannot walk around with almost stepping on something; there are very few places to sit down because every single flat surface in that house, (including chairs) has something on it. And to top it all off, a thick layer of dust coats everything in the house, making it look like a mom-and-pop operated antique shop in which everything has been draped with a thin veil. My parents have not changed – they have just become more of who they are and, in doing so, the house has become less and less like the home in which I grew up and more and more like a storage facility in which my parents live. Nay, not live – reside. It is impossible to “live” in their house. Over the past few days, I have looked at old photographs of my brother and I from the late 70s and early 80s, just to remind myself how the house once looked. My mother took over my old bedroom, painted in a color which I choose to called “Pepto-Bismol Pink,” and turned it into her office. I use the term “office” loosely as an office is usually defined as a place in which one completes work. Due to stacks and stacks of clutter, there is very little room in which to do work. My brother’s old bedroom, which always seemed small, has gotten smaller. My parents have converted this room into something I never thought imaginable: a living area, completed with a full-sized futon and television. However, the room is so small, (and also cluttered with knick-knacks) that when you sit on the futon, the TV is pretty much directly in front of you. The living room houses an unfinished harpsichord bought by my mother about a decade ago, (which, due to my mother’s short attention span, will never be finished) – instead, it sits there – taking up what little space is in the living room; collecting dust; and acting as yet another flat surface on which to collect a seemingly infinite number of CDs, sheet music, and yet more knick-knacks. The rest of the living room is filled to the hilt with literally thousands of CDs. It is to the point where, if I were to play all of my mother’s CDs, back to back, sans pause, I would not be able to hear everything she had in my lifetime.
My mother’s influence can now be seen in the kitchen, which was once one of two places my father could call his own, (the other being his office in the attic.) My father has always done the majority of the cooking, and it’s only logical that he would arrange the kitchen to his liking. He was always very precise in where things went; he had a logical system of everything from storing food and kitchen utensils to the very “flow” of the kitchen. If anyone did anything to disrupt this logic, my father would yell at whoever caused the problem and/or immediately get rid of the problem. Shortly before I moved from my home town, I remember an instance in which my mother bought a stupid little shelf for the kitchen which was supposed to stand right above the faucet of the kitchen sink. First of all, it was unnecessary to buy such a thing since my father had all the shelf space he needed AND this thing wasn’t very wide or stable, meaning that it wasn’t practical for anything except more stupid knick-knacks. On top of all of this, the shelf was too short and hindered one’s ability to turn on the faucet. Any normal person would say, “Hmm. That doesn’t quite work” and get rid of it. But such is not the case with my mom. Between her lack of logical thinking and her stubbornness to always be right, she insisted that the shelf stay where it is, despite the completely valid arguments from my father. After losing the verbal battle, my father took the offending shelf down to the basement, where he sawed it into little pieces before taking it to the curb and putting it with the rest of the garbage. My mom was so pissed that she didn’t speak to anyone for days. My father, on the other hand, continued to work in the kitchen – humming a happy little tune to himself.
Those days are over.
A few years ago, a friend of mine, (who still lived across the street from my parents), told me that my mother had bought a “butcher block” for the kitchen and told me that it is too big for the space and looks absolutely ridiculous. I forgot about this somewhat until the moment I walked into my parents’ kitchen. It’s not a butcher block but more like an island-type work station that stands smack dab in the middle of the kitchen. Due to its size and location, not only can you not seat more than two people at the kitchen table (which used to seat four), but also makes it extremely difficult to do anything in the kitchen. God help you if there is more than one person in the kitchen doing anything so much as getting a drink from the fridge. Although these are not the exact dimensions, try to imagine a 4’x4’ kitchen island in a 6’x6’ kitchen. This, of course, made meal times interesting. Even though there were only three of us, we had to eat breakfast in shifts. Of course, we would use the dining room table if there weren’t so much crap on top of it. And, even when I tried to help out by cleaning up some of the stuff on the dining room table, my mother yelled at me, telling me that she would do it herself….. some day.
Of course, I never expected my parents to keep my room or my brother’s room as they were when we lived there – But I did imagine that they would make them a bit more practical. My parents’ 3-bedroom house, in which I grew up with both of my parents and my brother can now only accommodate two people…. Barely.
