Every year, just as the kids’ school bell rings signaling the start of their winter holiday, my family heads home! Home to me is my parent’s house in Florida. I look forward to these vacations and dread them at the same time. Going home is like being stuck in adolescent rewind. No matter how long you are away, when you go back home to visit, all the years seem to disappear and somehow you end up becoming 15 years old again.
The same folks, who have graciously grown comfortable with their slower paced years, get sucked up into the chaos of our life. My parents seem to get amnesia and forget that I am a grown woman with my own children. It’s as if a Back to the Future DeLorean time machine has dropped us kicking and screaming into the 80s again.
Now it’s not all bad. How nice it is to have someone else doing my laundry and seeing if I need a fresh towel or a little something to eat. But along with the turning-down-the-sheets service, comes the mommy smothering too. “Sharon shouldn’t you wear a sweater?” mom will ask as I head out the door and into the muggy and humid Miami heat. “When will you be home?” she’ll inquire as if I am going to a Friday night football game instead of the grocery store with my husband. “You are not going to drive in the rain are you?” Mom gasps and shakes her head as I tell her that is why they invented windshield wipers!
Or she will follow me around the house turning lights off behind me, closing windows, shutting doors and commenting on the food I put into her refrigerator. “Why did you buy new apple juice? I had some from the last time you were here.” It has been over a year since our last visit!
Then there is the fight over the thermostat. I understand that she gets cold, but if I wanted to sleep in a sauna I would have booked a stay at the spa. I am forced to wait until she goes off to sleep and then sneak out like a ninja to turn the temperature down. In the morning I awake early to put it back up … for if I am caught there will be hell to pay. (Oh shoot, I forgot that my mom is my biggest fan and reads everything I write. I love you mommy!)
But just when I think I can’t take it a second longer, just when I am ready to pack my bags and head for dodge … I will walk into the family room and find my daughter snuggled up on the couch beside her grandmother. The two of them are laughing as my mother shows her pictures of me when I was her age. I watch the way my baby girl holds the old black and white photographs of her grandmother in her chubby hands so carefully. Stacks of albums, boxes and boxes of captured moments in time lay next to them just waiting to be looked through and have their stories passed down to the younger generation. My heart melts looking at them both. This is what I long for, these precious moments and these treasured memories.
It makes sleeping in the Mojave Desert almost worthwhile!
Sharon Fuentes is a frequent contributor to Westchester Family and can be found sweating in Florida come this December.
