Badda Bing! Badda Boom!!

My mother has been old for as long as I can remember.  She saves money for "the nursing home."  Only one of my grandparents ended up in a nursing home - a grandmother who was almost 100 years old when she died, and she bitched about being old not at all.  Still my mother has her sights set on being taken care of.  I almost think she wants to be a burden.  Most parents want to avoid being a burden.  It's pretty weird.  My mother took care of her mother and she goddam wants to be taken care of.  She's earned it.

Of course she married a man who didn't lift a finger to do anything domestically for his entire life and he goddam well isn't going to start now.  The problem is that he really is in sorry shape physically and really needs the help, but it's the way he goes about it - angrily demanding and belittling when he doesn't get what he wants.  He's in pain but that doesn't mean he should whale on my mom who's drifting mentally and not in a position to do all that much work.  I know that it's frustrating but who sat around for 30 years watching The Television?  What did he think was going to happen?

And then there's my sister who wouldn't come to pick me up from the airport in the middle of the night, in a rainstorm, because she "doesn't see well at night."   She didn't take me to the airport early in the morning because "it's too fricking cold."  She probably thinks that she's done more than enough - more than me, certainly, a casualty of distance and a disconnectedness.  

I did move away after all.  I made that decision.  If I was a caretaker I wouldn't have left. There's a certain selfishness in making me fend for myself with A-One Taxi at 5AM but there's a great deal of selfishness in moving away to pursue my own interests.