Eventually, we all become our parents. At least that's where I go when those legendary phrases spew from me like gastrointestinal distress from a Taco Bell volcano burrito.
Kids today don't know how good they got it.Why can't we have anything nice?!When I was your age, I used to jump over the house, twice.
They somehow become a rite of passage, a familial road sign to the next stop. But the detour I wasn't prepared for is when the parent becomes the child.
I don't mean when my dad dyed his silver hair jet-black to match my mom's before they went on a vacation with friends. It will take 10 years off of you the beautician told him. It actually took 10 seconds of silence as we thought how to respond to what he hoped would be his entry into AARP's Sexist Man Alive issue.
Exuberant aging aside, I'm talking about the signs that sneak up on you, sinisterly: The scratch in the car's fender (those plastic bumpers nowadays aren't worth a crap). The stumble in the hallway (those new shoes just weren't broken in yet). The phrase you have to repeat for the fourth time (your dad keeps that TV up so loud, I can't hear a thing).
There's always an answer for everything. But eventually the child becomes the parent.
It starts small. Let me help you down the stairs, Dad. Then one Saturday you find yourself helping him get in and out of the shower. And then you notice that bruise and how he seems to be getting so thin. You learn all about stool risers, med alert alarm systems and transport chairs (BTW, I found WalMart had the best buy on them). You're managing meds and finances, arranging for home health services and carting him off to activities (otherwise known as doctor appointments).
Like most parents, you'd do anything for your children. I can remember my dad telling me how he just hated that he couldn't do things--that I had to help him. I told him he had done it for me. Now it was my turn to do for him.
But I did it for me too. There was comfort in rubbing lotion on his back, restoration in shaving off the stubble and solace in helping him put on a warm sweatshirt. In the end, it gets down to the bare essentials of human interaction. Just like when life starts out for a child.
Up until his death, our Saturday ritual played out--I playing Ward and he the Beaver. Yet now I wonder if it was really Father Knows Best that we were performing. In his way, was he sharing his last lesson? I've always found it easier to do for others than to permit them to do the same for me. Was it about sacrificing one's own vulnerabilities to keep human connection alive?
Maybe the parent became the parent, again.
