Christmas Eve, sort of...

I'm sitting here listening to my dad's arm drain (for lack of a better name for it), it sounds like a clock, or coffee perk, like the kind that you used to set on the stove to make coffee. I'm pretty amazed, he drove home from San Antonio and drove to dinner and for the most part hasn't been too grumpy. Again, like last Christmas, I am alone. I am the only one of my parents' children at home. 

I hate being at home. Well,  I don't hate it, but I'm always so ready to get back to my life, that I've started coming home for a shorter and shorter time. I know this isn't the best things to do, but in some ways I feel like I'm in prison. Despite having come out more than three years ago, mentioning the fact that I like boys is still taboo to my parents. I get it, ok, I really do, after all I had to come out to them, I had to break all of their plans, so I know that it isn't at all easy for them to hear me talk about being gay. But then, if we can't talk about it, then why did I come out? What was the point if I can't have an open and honest relationship with my parents in the first place? So each time I come home, I go into the cage of charm. Talk about everything else but what I might be up to, and comfort myself with the fact that I'll be back at home in a matter of days and then I can be myself.  As much as I don't think my brother and sister have as much in common, none of the three of us likes to come home, and they live near my parents.

This past year I realize how lucky we are; that my parents are in late-middle age and not approaching their golden years, so that they can recover from heart attacks and shoulder loss and not need someone to move home and start a new life. Comforting as that may be, though, it's so scary to realize that your parents are getting old. By the time my grandmother was 52, the age her oldest son, my father, is now she already had 7 of 9 grandchildren. My parents have none, and yet they are twenty years ahead in their major medical problems. Instead of coming home to visit, which is what my folks really want me to do, I'm afraid that I'm going to be coming home to help them clean the house, or clean up and organize the garage. And, even though I tell myself that it's temporary and only because Dad can't help Mom because of his arm, I still can't help but think of the day when that becomes a principal reason for every trip home, and that is such a daunting thought. 

What's more is that I find it harder to relate to these people, especially my dad, because this isn't the man who I grew up afraid of. I don't always know how to respond when he says, "I love you" or "I'm glad you're here," or "I was hoping you would stay longer,". I don't know what to do with this, not because I doubt his sincerity, but because I have no idea how to tell him that as much as love that we get up and drink coffee together and visit, that I'd rather be at my own house with my own life. But we'll see, we always are the most real over a good cup of coffee.