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Sometimes one's best intentions can be misguided and inviting one's
family to the beach in Thailand for three weeks could be one such
occasion. I am sure that in my twilight years I will look back on
this time with affection, choking on my nostalgia. Meanwhile, back
in reality I am choking on other things and these halcyon emotions
evade me.
I write my post card from the edge to a friend back home ... (see
right)
My parents have always been very supportive of my absence. Some
would say that they actively encourage my not being there but I
like to think that given the choice they would rather have had me
around rather than six thousand miles and eight hours time difference
away. Even now when I call home (10AM PST /18.00GMT) my mum still
asks me what I have done to day? "Not much mum, just got out
of bed". "Just got out of bed you lazy bones, you cannot
waste your life away in bed my son".
Mums are great.
My follks have always been older than my peers'. In fact, when
I first realised this when I was a kid I was thrown into a real
tail spin. "Who's going to look after me when they are gone?".
They were in their late fifties... but still, then at the age of
twelve I couldn't imagine them living into their eighties. I eventually
grew out of this unreasonable fear and moved to the states ten years
later. Now, twenty four years hence I wonder who is going to look
after them? Again the eastern culture illustrates how the nuclear
family works. The children do not fall far from the nest so the
grandparents are close at hand to take care of the grandchildren
and in turn, the children are close at hand to take care of the
parents, and so it goes. Today in our modern go faster, go further
universe I find that we seem to fall further from the tree - eventually.
Myself included and so I find myself faced with the moral question
"When do I take care of my parents?" This leads on to
perhaps the harder question which is "Where do I take care
of my parents?"
It was five years ago that I realised that at last my early fears
were founded, when I returned home one time to find them 'old'.
Since then I have spent several vacations with them or with them
and other members of the family - making memories as they say to
help stave of the expensive psychotherapy bills.
It is a fascinating symbiosis which takes place as our parents
age. Why is adololescence to the family unit like the big bang is
to matter in the universe? I have found my life expanding away from
home and now I seem to be being pulled back by the gravitational
pull of my parents.
The interesting thing about parents getting old is the perfect
symmetry that life presents. They really are children now, the roles
are reversed and taken to the extreme children could end up changing
the diapers of the very person who changed theirs so many years
before. This would be the ultimate symmetry.
But back to the beach and the reality of the situation. Unfortunately
I have very little in common with my parents and my siblings. I
don't think we ever have anything in common with our parents, they
are for the longest time parents and not people. But I just feel
they are from a different world and my siblings too. The things
they find to talk about when I would just rather sit and be. One
of favourite quotes is from my Dad when we were staying in a archetypal
sea side bed and breakfast in Falmouth, Cornwall. We were sat down
to breakfast. There were the usual guests positioned around the
room, the pre-requisite spinster sisters, older married couple and
us. It would have perhaps been more appropriate if I had turned
up for breakfast wearing an anorak, thick plastic NHS glasses and
with my trousers at half mast to reveal shocking white socks. The
stereoptypical nurdy bachelor still living with his parents like
Ronny Corbett in Sorry. The Italians have a word for such a thing
"asviagato". But I digress. The silence of the clatter
of knives and forks is broken my Dad's voice, which is inordinately
loud since he is partially deaf "This tea is a lovely colour".
The conversations at the beach take the same tack. My parents comment
on the comfort level of the different chairs they come across, my
sister asks what money comes out of the ATM and her boyfriend how
deep the water is and how many businesses go bankrupt each year.
Futhermore, the island is called Coy Samui and the mystery
currency from the ATM bats and not 'Baht'. I gently remind
them that I work for Oracle and that I am not actually an oracle.
The best though is when my father observes that there seem to be
a lot of old men with young thai women.
A few days into the vacation I send the postcard above, my postcard
from the edge.
Like the weather in this tropical utopia my euphoric feelings of
the first few days are quickly washed away by a bucket fall of reality.
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