A Recap In Your Ass, Part 1: Home Consistent Home May 7, 2008

One of the more unsettling aspects about visiting your parents aside from the fact that you are doing the complete opposite of living your peaceful existence can be that sense that, while you’ve been away, time has stood eerily still. That it hasn’t flown all that fast or changed all that much.
 
And when you live a flurry-filled life in a quick-paced city (Ed. note: Stop scoffing, New Yorkers), that lack of change can be a welcome comfort.
  
Of course, when your parents are my parents, the emphasis on that last sentence sometimes rests a little too comfortably on can.
  
I made a trip to Michigan to see my family back in March. 
 
It began well. Expecting my father at the train station - him, happy to welcome any opportunity to drill life lessons in me while I am subject to no obvious means of escape (i.e. locked doors, moving car) - it was a fucking thrill to see my mother’s Saab in the parking lot. She, as is custom when having not seen me in many moons, smothered frantic hugs and kisses. And, once I was safely packed away in the car, my younger sisters unveiled a box of Brueggers’ Cinnamon Sugar Bagels (Ed. note: YUM) and a vat of Honey Walnut cream cheese (Ed. note: HOLY FUCKING YUM) while giggling about the milk my father drank earlier that day that may have been a few days past its expiration day, him theorizing that expiration date just way for milk company make you buy more milk and make more money! His hypothesis being proven wrong the reason for his absence.
 
My father’s first sentiment upon seeing me was that it was very nice to have me home. His second? But, Daughter, how you bigger still than last time I see you! What you eat in Chicago? Only deep-dish pizza breakfast, lunch and dinner, huh!
  
I resisted the urge to grab a pen to jot down what he had said. Or, alternatively, to gouge my ears until they bled.
  
That he told me it was nice to see me before he decided to assess my hypothetical weight gain from how I looked, covered by a heavy fleece blanket, as I sat on the couch is, I think, what the shrink I used to see before I had to make a financial decision between feeding my stomach sustenance and feeding my mind sanity would classify as progress.
  
And that he told me to eat at least three plates because three is good number you find many times in science and math, nature too of the Korean delicacies my mother had cooked just for me and my arrival right after inquiring whether I routinely eat deep-dish pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Well, I’m sure that’s just his way of making sure that I always feel like my presumed bipolar disorder has a friend in his.
  
There really is no place like home, yes?
 
Home consistent home.
 
The same two-story house. In the same gated community. With the same first grade picture of me - dressed in dark denim overalls and a hot pink and navy blue plaid blouse with my hair divided into twelve different braids because my mother loves me - framed, resting on the same Steinway whose keys I covered with peanut butter before a lesson one Sunday when I was eight because I knew my piano teacher had yup, just the worst allergy to peanuts and those peanut butter cookies sure do smell wonderful but NOPE! Can’t have a lick - not one! Darn allergy to those peanut nuts - gotta avoid ’em at all costs! and I? Wanted to avoid him at all costs.
  
Sure, the behemoth Sony I remember is now a flat-screen Samsung and my parents have figured out that the Internet holds more than just the keys to driving directions and I even hear myself telling my 17-year-old sister that I remember when I had to surf the Internet with a 52K modem and does she realize how lucky she is to have all this wireless Wi-Fi (Ed. note: Is wireless Wi-Fi redundant?) at home. But - when it comes down to it - the deck door off the kitchen still creaks when you try to sneak out of it at night.
 
And something else that hasn’t changed either, I learned, is my family’s uncanny ability to drop mind-fucking-jarring news to me with the kind of casualness that most people would employ to let someone know that it’s just begun raining outside or that the bathroom has just run out of its toilet paper. Which is why, coming soon, will be:
 
A Recap In Your Ass, Part 2: And Then I Learned My Father’s Blindness In One Eye Is All My Fault

A Recap In Your Ass, Part 3: And Then I Learned My Big Boobs May In Fact Be Large Tumors
 
Yes, indeed, all this lack of change? Can be welcome.
 
To this blog anyway. That can always use more to file under Family, Dysfunctional.