Parents

While we were growing up, my parents hardly ever took vacations. Their lives appeared to revolve around us, and I worried about what they would do when all of us were finally out of the house. How incredibly lonely they would be, I thought, with my younger sister in her first year of college, me in my senior year at Cornell, and my older sister starting her career in California.

It wasn’t until I moved back to Massachusetts and got married that I realized just how wrong I’d been. Far from being going through the pangs of empty nest syndrome, my parents were having the time of their lives. Apparently five minutes after we’d abandoned the house, they’d declared their home party central.

My parents now had a more active social life than I did, with dancing classes on alternate Saturdays, potluck parties on Fridays, and group vacations every fall to places I’d never been. Each November they returned from their two week trip refreshed and eager to show us their photos of their large Asian tour group, posed stiffly in front of various historical landmarks.

While they were away, it usually fell upon us to visit their home weekly and water their plants. My mother invariably left detailed instructions on the kitchen table for me, and prefaced each trip with a phone call to remind me to take what food I wanted from their refrigerator.

This year, they bypassed their annual fall trip in favor of a later visit to Taiwan, so they could vote in the presidential election. In preparation for the trip, my mother started taking a cholesterol-reducing drug

“My cholesterol’s a bit high,” she confided in me, during her last phone call before they departed. “Dr. Wang gave me Lipitor to take, but I had some funny side effects. He said to stop taking it for now, and then try again after I get back.”

“Is that a problem?” I asked. “I mean, if you’ve got high cholesterol, shouldn’t you get on something right away?’

My mother, the medical records coder, who prided herself on visiting the doctor only after she’d self-diagnosed herself and decided what prescription to ask for, said, “Oh no! No problem. Anyway, I only asked for the drug because we’re going to Taiwan and I’m planning on eating a lot of bad food there.”

With another admonition to take food from their kitchen when we came to water the plants, my mother hung up.

A week later, I dragged Chris with me to check on my parents’ house. A snowstorm had fallen a few days earlier, and the driveway was still covered in snow, save for a few car tracks where a deliveryman had driven up to toss their newspaper in the bushes.

“Uh oh, I better shovel,” I remarked.

“What for?” asked Chris. “It’s all going to melt by the time your parents get back next week.”

“Yeah, but my parents will freak out that the snow’s lying here while they’re gone. Everyone can tell that no one’s home.”

Chris said, “But how are your parents going to find out that there was snow?”

I glanced surreptitiously around me, at the houses staring back at me. “The neighbors,” I whispered. “Someone will tell my parents. They might be watching us right now.”

I opened the garage and searched for a snow shovel. The first one I found was a light plastic one; so light, in fact, that it skidded across the top of the snow and couldn’t dig down to the bottom layer.

The second shovel I tried was a metal one. Surely this one would be more effective, and it was–except that it was so heavy that I could barely lift it after each shovelful of snow.

I was used to our shovels at home. One of them had a spring-loaded handle that allowed me to scoop up a good chunk of snow, and then fling it to the side of the driveway. The other shovel we owned was a deeply concave one, with a bent handle that was meant for pushing the snow in front of the shovel to the edge of the driveway. I missed our shovels.

I found one last shovel in my parents’ garage. This one was a suitable weight for me, but like the first two shovels, it consisted of a flat piece hammered onto a straight wooden pole. The snow slid around the flat piece, and I ended up tossing each shovelful against the ground near the driveway, because I couldn’t scoop up the snow enough to fling it onto the yard.

My parents had more money than I did, but apparently they didn’t realize that shovels had come a long way in the last ten years, and that shovels were cheap.

Chris surveyed the selection. “My god, don’t they have any better shovels?” he asked.

“Nope. I tried them all. I’m thinking of taking these home with us, tossing them in the trash, and just sticking a new shovel in their garage,” I said. “Otherwise they won’t buy any new ones, because my father will say it’s a huge waste of money when they already have three shovels.”

Chris took over the shoveling, because I was already developing a blister, and I grabbed the mail and headed inside.

Some junk mail for my parents, and a magazine addressed to me but with their address on it, another piece of mail with my name on it, and a letter for each of my sisters. We had more mail going to their house than my parents did.

I unlocked the front door and had difficulty opening it. When I finally managed to force the door open, bits of cardboard fluttered out of the crack between the door and the wall. Although my parents didn’t believe in turning up the heat in the house, they were strong believers in the cardboard method.

Cardboard, they felt, shoved around the doorways, helped prevent the cold wind from coming through. In fact, all they accomplished was a slow erosion of the wall, making the gap larger year by year.

My mother had left her usual note on the table. In her careful script, she’d listed out five bullet points for us. Three of the points related to food.

“Fruit, garlic, ginger in fridge. You can take it,” read point number 2.

Point number 3 added “More eggs in fridge, if you need it, take it.”

Number 4: “Freezer has salmon, shrimp on top shelf. Take some.”

Evidently my mother felt that without her help, we would slowly starve. I cracked open the fridge and decided against taking any of the food, because we did in fact go grocery shopping at places other than my mother’s refrigerator. On the top shelf of the fridge, my mother had left a can of Mountain Dew for Chris and a bottle of water for me. I could almost see her bustling around the kitchen, telling herself, “These kids won’t remember to drink any liquids, so I better leave them some in case they dry out.”

Point 1 of the note stated simply, “I bought this plate for you, please take home.” And Point 5? “Thank you.”

I filled up a watering can and went into the family room to start watering the plants. I was awful with plants, and usually I ended up drowning their cacti. My mother had so many plants that I had trouble navigating between the leaves of some of them in order to get to the plants near the window. Some of the plants didn’t seem alive, but rather than risk missing some, I ended up watering a few pots of dirt just in case.

At least this time it looked like I was the first to water the plants in a week. During their last trip, my parents had left instructions for me to water their plants, and when I entered the house, I found out that some other neighbor had been watering them every other day.

Chris stumbled inside. “I finally finished shoveling,” he said. “I couldn’t do the bit at the end of the driveway, so I figured the snowplow would get that.”

“Oh no,” I said. “The town always plows against the opposite side of the street, and we usually have to shovel half the street to get out of the driveway. I have to shovel that part.”

“Why does it matter?” Chris demanded.

“Because,” I explained patiently, “my parents are insane. They want the whole thing shoveled and my mother would be mortified if she knew there was snow at the bottom of the driveway.”

Chris and I didn’t even bother shoveling at home, figuring that whatever stuck to the driveway was bound to melt at some point. But my parents came from a different generation, one in which driveways were shoveled when you were away, and you asked your daughter to water pots of dirt for you.

Posted by: Supersonic Jane | March 24, 2004 | 8:25 pm
Posted in: This Life