I love my parents......

.......but sometimes I want to smack them on the head with a rolled-up newspaper.

I've put off talking about them but....what the hell. Where do I start?

My parents are STUCK.

My Mom..........

My mom ran her own store when she was 16. 16! A little corner store in Belfast. She moved here with her family when she was 18. I've heard her speak of working in a bakery on Granville, and then she had a job at the Worker's Compensation Board. I see pictures of her then. Curvy. Lady-like. Great posture. Demure. Matching purse-and-gloves kinda gal. Red lipstick. GREAT smile. Opinionated. There was some Italian waiter who worked near her who would follow her home. He wasn't scary, though. My Mom had a stalker!

My Dad was born here. Got the highest score IN THE PROVINCE on the Provincial English exam his graduating year. His teachers hated him. He was a smart-ass. Soooo skinny. Tall. Leather jacket. Pilot's license. Loved airplanes and target shooting. Funny. Natural talent for drawing. Opinionated. He and his buddy would crash weddings. His buddy would hit on the married women while my Dad would distract the husbands. Talk about a wing-man! He worked in a grocery store, then an Eaton's stockboy, then the post office, where he stayed for 30 years. He also, in the early days, would run occasional errands for a man named Bunny Fagin. I LIVE for Bunny Fagin stories......

They met and married pretty damn quickly in their mid-twenties. Then pumped out 4 kids in 8 years. By MY AGE, my mother had 4 kids. Whew.

When I was little, my folks would have occasional screaming fights. My siblings and I would hide in our rooms. I remember being so scared that they would get divorced. I also remember feeling like they weren't fighting about what was REALLY bothering them. I could somehow sense it.

My Dad worked as a mail-carrier, then as a Postal Supervisor. My Mom was a housewife. My Dad retired about 12 years ago. My Mom is still waiting.......

My sister has 2 kids. I love them, but....... My Mom takes care of them during week-days while their parents are at work. My Mom is back tending to kids, has been for 9 years. Basically, since my Dad retired. My Dad feels too bad to leave her stuck at home with the Grandkids, so he's stuck at home too.

The nieces, who I love, are brats. I'm sitting with the 4-year-old while she's eating toast. She chucks a piece on the floor. I tell her to pick it up. She refuses. I insist. She gets snotty and whines. My Mom swoops in and picks it up. The 4-year-old looks at me smugly. I want to smack her. Stuff like this happens all the time. Later, my Mom complains about the 4-year-old's behavior. No shit, Mom! No Consequences. We teach people how to treat us.

My Mom has a MASSIVE martyr complex. She's angry because she feels she had no choice. She gives and gives and gives, for stuff we never asked for. So inevitably, she's taken advantage of. She does not see that she HAS A CHOICE. Tell my sister to get a fucking nanny! How dare she steal YEARS where you could be getting back to WHO YOU ARE!
I offer to help with dinner. Mom takes that as a suggestion that I think that"dinner isn't getting to the table fast enough". I, I think, understandably, back off. Then she subtly complains about how she has no help. Or, if she lets me help by making the salad, I somehow don't do it right.
The only pleasure she has is cigarettes. She has chronic-bronchitis, and can barely get through a sentence without coughing, but says that she "has a cold" or "something went down the wrong pipe".

My Brother.........
is pushing 40. He STILL lives with my parents. My brother is painfully shy. Very sensitive. Awkward. Geeky. Teenaged air-cadet..... yeesh. Brilliant. Quiet. Could have been a surgeon. When I was 17, he decided that he wanted to learn how to play guitar. Within a week, he had taught himself how to play several songs. Just like that.
He and I were close while growing up. We would protect ourselves from the crazed rantings of our middle sister, the ONLY extrovert my parents raised, by making fun of her behind her back. It was awesome. We loved Letterman. And Saturday Night Live. Much late-night T.V. watching with my bro.
He was sensitive. So was I. I think he suffers from a thing my Mom did to me as well. INADVERTANTLY, mind you......
As a sensitive, introverted kid, if I was scared about something I had to do, something at school for example, she would NOT make me do it, let me off the hook. Sooooo empathetic. It would break her heart to see me scared. But, by letting me off the hook, she inadvertantly was telling me that I was RIGHT to be scared, and would probably fail. Does that make sense? Hoo boy.....

My bro is an aircraft mechanic. At a small rural airport. Hardly gets paid work. He has his pilot's license, and a two-seater Cessna. I'm impressed that he has at least that.....

My Dad is very disappointed in him. "He could have done anything he wanted. He has the skill and the smarts....."
Yes, but Dad, it would have helped if you had TOLD HIM THAT. Stop whining to me. TELL HIM NOW. And while you're at it, KICK HIM OUT OF THE HOUSE. Time for tough love.
It's like we grew up before he noticed us.

When you are a kid, your parents are ........super-heroes or something. Now, I just see them as people. Fucked up, funny, sweet, smart, dumb people.

My parents. NOW they sorta get the acting thing. NOW they're getting a sense of who I am. It was MY job to let them know. They have helped SO MUCH in the past 10 months, especially financially. I was never molested, never starved. I love them, and am really seeing how they shaped me.
For good and for bad.

Now I occasionally find myself fantasizing about how they would be if they HAD got a divorce, and wishing that they had. Who would they be now? What would they be doing?

How can you guess I want to the folk's for dinner tonight? Sometimes, they really make me want to drink.
Oh wait, I AM drinking.........