Life on Pluto

Sometimes I feel like a visit with my parents challenges my brain to become a rubber band. As I sit and listen to their discussions about retirement (“I need to retire” says one while the other says “I will never retire”) and relocation to Florida, my rubber band is pulled in a direction so that my brain fits their dilemma into my orbit of consciousness. Before I am able to decipher exactly what has happened, I am sitting at my father’s laptop explaining that this ad on craigslist for the condo in Bonita Springs is a rental for $1000 per week not $1000 per month. By the time I realize that I have invested effort into their exploration on my planet of consciousness (and technical capabilities with modern day search engines) they think that not only are they going to find an affordable place near Ft. Myers (dad) and within walking distance of the beach (mom), we are also going to find that magical place at this very moment. Meanwhile, I am in the midst of a career crisis and have mentioned my idea about being a nutritionist to my father who responded by saying, “Everyone is a nutritionist today. Did I ever tell you I went to a nutritionist about 15 years ago and she just told me to stop eating junk? I could have told myself that.” The feedback is incredibly insightful and encouraging. It’s a trying time for them: there are major decisions to be made at the brink of retirement. Far more important decisions than those that one is making at the age of 31 (minor things like marriage, children, career). So I ask myself, “Why visit people who are always on the brink of a transition when you yourself are trying to negotiate your own decisions? Is this helpful? Is this relaxing? Is this creating clarity?” And my instinctual responses respectively are: “Masochism. No. No. No.”

Don’t get me wrong. Part of the reason I come to visit my parents in time of confusion and doubt is because they dwarf my worries and I find that comforting, albeit probably not in the most conducive way. Their lives are Jupiter and mine is Pluto (it is not a coincidence that I mention Pluto, which was recently stripped of its planetary status by NASA). In my studio apartment in Brooklyn, my Pluto life seems large and ambiguous with lots of cold, dark places that need investigating and definition. But next to Jupiter, Pluto looks just about right: the right size, the right banished placement out in the depths of existence (New York City). Somehow, though, there is always far more exploratory adventure on their Jupiter than there is on my Pluto. They are terrific tour guides who present the most dramatic of their landscape: “Exhibit A. House Heating Tank Buried Under a 12 Foot Snow Bank, Exhibit B. Should the new Faux-Antique-Countryish 5 foot sign that says something like ‘Good Friends, Good Times’ go on the wall in the kitchen or the living room?” They are great marketers, too. It seems that their neon “OPEN” sign is always blinking. Stepping into their lives is like driving down to 7-Eleven at 2am on a Tuesday: it has what you need and maybe a few distractions.

What is bewildering is that my parents seem slightly uninterested in their children’s storefronts. I’m not sure if my neon sign isn’t plugged in, or if they already have what they are looking for, but they don’t seem to pull into my parking lot. And, actually, I wonder if I am just not in their planetary neighborhood. They’ll open up their orbit to Pluto but they’re sure as hell not going to lug Jupiter to the outskirts of the universe for a visit. Again, this relates to their inability to travel down Interstate 95 for 180 miles to come visit their two daughters in New York City. That is really stretching the space-time-parental-travel continuum a bit too far. [Let’s not dwell on the two siblings in California or one in India]. Jupiter’s moons, of which there are numerous, consist of Daily Routines, Debt, Mortgages, Nieces, Nephews, Sisters, Brothers, Parents, Houses, Cars, and Children. My 7-Eleven is up and running. It’s location is just not public. It never has been. My parents have only found it a couple times and it’s because I handed them a map.

I sound awfully cynical. It’s a coping mechanism. Bear with me.

I bumped into an old friend last week whose mother always had her figurative car parked in her daughter’s figurative 7-Eleven parking lot. As a kid I remember it being torture when I was at my friend’s 7-Eleven and her mother was there, too. Always and (what turned out to be) Forever. I recall the internal strife I felt when a parent other than my own, would want to be friends with their kids (and me). It was weird. It was annoying. It was worse than having a younger sibling want to hang out with my friends. It was desperate. It was embarrassing. When my carpool dropped me off at home, I would walk in the door to a house full of chaos. With a sports announcer magically raising his voice over the family, a brother testing out his slapshot on me as I opened the door, and a sister microwaving her ice cream I would go directly up to my room to do homework and wonder who these aliens were. Upon my ascension on the second flight of stairs, I could hear one of my parents say, “Was that Erin? Is she home?” And then would hear one of my siblings respond with a South-Park like voice, “Yes, that was Er-WIN, she is HERE!”

It was tough transition: being with other parents who asked lots of questions, wanted to know the gossip, wanted to know who was good and who was bad and then coming home to my parents who simply wanted to know if I was present. I craved some middle ground. Honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. They have plenty of other 7-Elevens and moons and planets and probably other universes, actually, to keep tabs on. What works out nicely in big families is that “keeping tabs on” doesn’t mean a thing. But thinking you know what is going on means more. As the family extrovert and hence as the Family Spokesperson, my mother projected what family goings-on were happening throughout my childhood. These projections, like today’s newscasts, were not always accurate. And to my surprise, to this day cousins, aunts, and uncles can still be astonished to learn the real version of any given story from the other six members of our household. My mother is generous, funny, straight-forward, among other qualities, but accurate she is not, at least when it comes to memory and story telling. My dad covers that area, but unless there is a need to fill in for the star news anchor or unless there is a personal appeal for a re-telling of the story, most of the audience is going to get the not-so-true story from my mom.

But I digress.

My parents lives, since I was a child, put my life in perspective. I was a worried kid. I worried about things that didn’t matter and could only pull myself out of my spirals by watching my parents try to figure out how to divide $10 between a gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, enough tuna fish for three lunches, dish soap (used alternatively until the next pay day as shampoo), and enough unleaded gas to get my dad to work and back. It was just the ways things were and we never felt emotional about those decisions. I would need to be aware of that $10 crisis in order to push away the 12 year old anxieties I had.

The problem is: at 31, I’m not sure if I can take my parents worries and replace mine. Actually, I am pretty sure that they are going to be ok in retirement. I am pretty sure that if they made it this far, then things are looking pretty peachy for them. I am pretty sure that life on Jupiter is stimulating and that navigating their planet through the solar system of family members and life choices is a piece of cake for them at this point. I am pretty sure about them.

I’m just not pretty sure about me.