A Loving Indebtedness

Sometimes I'll have flashbacks to when I was younger. I'll sit and daydream as if I'm in a time warp. I'll think back to the time my mom pulled me across town in a red wagon to buy a leotard for my first gymnastics class.  We were a one car family at the time, but that didn't stop my mom from trekking through the Arizona heat to make sure I had a cute purple and white striped leotard. I remember sitting in the wagon while my mom pulled me along. I can still hear the sound of the traffic whizzing by as we traveled along the sidewalk of the main thoroughfare. We walked and rolled from our house on West Grovers Avenue to Smitty's on West Bell Road. I must have been five years old then. It felt like we traveled across the face of the earth; now I know it was only a little over two miles.

When I was a little older we drove that same route to Smitty's in our trusty white Chevy station wagon. That station wagon had certainly seen better days. At some point the tan upholstery attached to the ceiling of the car began to sag and tear away. My mom made do by meticulously tacking the thin material back into place. She inserted flat, silver push pins in straight rows from the back of the car to the front. The rows seemed to be exactly parallel, and the tacks were spaced evenly from one tack to the next. I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. I liked to sit in the back of the station wagon with our groceries and use my fingernails to loosen the tacks and then quickly push them back in.

My parents would later drive our station wagon to California when we moved here in 1989. Oh, many a tear was shed when we moved from Arizona. We LOVED Arizona. Loved it. We loved our friends, we loved our school, we loved the cactus and the perpetual mirages on the hot Arizona pavement. But my parents did what they felt they had to do. They always did and they continued to do so long after we settled into our new life in the capital city.  

I remember when Nick and I moved into our house four years ago. On our moving day I thought back to when my family moved into my parents' current house, a move that was almost 10 full years after arriving here in Sacramento. We moved in the middle of August in the sweltering central valley heat. I was completely miserable at the time because, one, moving sucks and, two, moving really effing sucks in August. My sad state led to too many self-administered breaks and complaining to no end. But my dad, he hauled box after box and every piece of furniture and household machinery we had without a peep. So when Nick and I moved into our first house, it hit me how much my parents had really sacrificed for us. Not because my dad didn't complain on that moving day, but because my parents lived their lives providing for their children without a peep.      

As an adult, it's amazing to see how much my parents have sacrificed over the years for my brothers and I. They did everything they could to give us a lifestyle they didn't have growing up. Sometimes that meant working 60 hour weeks and sometimes that meant holding down a job that paid well, but lacked interest. Most of the time it meant both.

There's not a day that goes by that I don't wish I could give my parents some years back to travel the world or to take time to be really, really selfish. They don't know what that's like since they've had kids 34 out of the 35 years they've been married. Selfish isn't even in their vocabulary. I wish I could give them the relaxing, carefree lifestyle they deserve. I wish my mom could go do frivolous things like get pedicures on a whim or jump on a plane for a spa weekend with her girlfriends in Palm Springs. I wish my dad could go do whatever it is that men want to do that doesn't involve strippers or driving recklessly in a stolen roadster.

Right now, as their 35th wedding anniversary approaches, I can't give them any of these things. I can let them know that I get it. I get that they sacrificed their lives for us even though they never mentioned anything of the sort and even though they'd never call it sacrificing. But that's exactly what they did. My parents sacrificed their lives for us. All these fun memories remind me of how awesome my parents are, how much I love them, and how grateful I am that they're here on this earth. So while I can't repay them in the way I'd like, I can give them my time - something that we're learning is so incredibly precious - to reminisce on old memories and make new ones.