I'm at my parents' house in Florida, having gotten here last night and almost immediately dozing off. The latter is not so much a commentary on Mom or Dad as it is on how tired I was last night.
Anyway, today I went for a nice but familiar bike ride and had an equally nice and familiar dinner of Mom's lasagna. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday; Mom is going to Mass and later we will have dinner. The day after that, Mom and I are planning to have lunch with a friend of hers with whom we had lunch the last time I was here, at Christmastime.
Although this is all fine, and I enjoy it, I am feeling rather strange about it all. Yes, Mom and Dad raised and supported me. But who was that "me?" And all those times in my I adult life I came to their house, wherever they were living, are among the reasons I am here now. But who was that person who spent those holidays, those weekends and those days and nights with them? That person had a different name from the one I now have, and made all sorts of choices and decisions I would not make now. Some of that, of course, is a matter of what nearly everyone feels upon reaching the age I am now: Nearly all of us have done things that, knowing what we know now, we wouldn't do. I am sure both of my parents feel this way. But, as you can imagine, for me everything was complicated by the fact that I was living, literally, as a different person from what I am now.
I can't help but to wonder whether they would be living the lives they're living, in this house, had they raised me as a girl--had any of us known that such a thing was even possible, as foreign as it would have been in the places and time in which we were living! I can't help but to think--even if I can't explain why or how--there are things they might've done differently if they had been raising Justine rather than Nick, and those things would have affected other choices they made. Perhaps I would have been better off, or at least I wouldn't have to learn the things I'm learning because I would have learned them earlier in my life. But what of my parents, and my brothers: Would they have been better or worse off? Or would it have made a difference?
Maybe it's just the realization that they have less and less time left in this life that's causing me to realize how much time I lost or wasted.
Anyway, today I went for a nice but familiar bike ride and had an equally nice and familiar dinner of Mom's lasagna. Tomorrow is Easter Sunday; Mom is going to Mass and later we will have dinner. The day after that, Mom and I are planning to have lunch with a friend of hers with whom we had lunch the last time I was here, at Christmastime.
Although this is all fine, and I enjoy it, I am feeling rather strange about it all. Yes, Mom and Dad raised and supported me. But who was that "me?" And all those times in my I adult life I came to their house, wherever they were living, are among the reasons I am here now. But who was that person who spent those holidays, those weekends and those days and nights with them? That person had a different name from the one I now have, and made all sorts of choices and decisions I would not make now. Some of that, of course, is a matter of what nearly everyone feels upon reaching the age I am now: Nearly all of us have done things that, knowing what we know now, we wouldn't do. I am sure both of my parents feel this way. But, as you can imagine, for me everything was complicated by the fact that I was living, literally, as a different person from what I am now.
I can't help but to wonder whether they would be living the lives they're living, in this house, had they raised me as a girl--had any of us known that such a thing was even possible, as foreign as it would have been in the places and time in which we were living! I can't help but to think--even if I can't explain why or how--there are things they might've done differently if they had been raising Justine rather than Nick, and those things would have affected other choices they made. Perhaps I would have been better off, or at least I wouldn't have to learn the things I'm learning because I would have learned them earlier in my life. But what of my parents, and my brothers: Would they have been better or worse off? Or would it have made a difference?
Maybe it's just the realization that they have less and less time left in this life that's causing me to realize how much time I lost or wasted.
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