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but, but -- *cleveland.*
The prospect of spending a solid three months in my parents' house causes, as you may imagine, mixed reactions. On the one hand, I haven't spent that much time there since I was nineteen and home for the summer after my freshman year of college. Apart from that, I've done stretches of four to six weeks three times (winter break 1995, summer vacation 1998, winter break 2004). It's not that I don't love my parents -- I do, and I have a pretty good relationship with them in the world of grown children's relationship with their parents. But it's hard for them to remember (not to understand, because obviously the same thing happened to both of them) that although I grew up in their house, I haven't lived there for a long time. It's their house, and their town, and their life. Northeastern Ohio, man, it's not where I am now. (At the moment I'm actually no place, but that's another story.) And three months is a long time to visit a place. Gah. But! There will be times I will declare I'm taking the car, and I will be within striking distance of some People I Want To Visit. So that's all right.
Plus, see above re: love my parents, but my father and I are enough alike that we tend to start getting on each other's nerves after about 96 hours at the outside. Actually, though, that's been getting better lately -- I want to say as he's mellowed out, but I think it's as we've both come to settle into the roles of Grown Child and Parent Who Is Maybe Beginning To Age. He was trying hard for a while to keep in mind that I was an adult, but every visit would get to a point where he'd do or say something that would have been what he'd have said or done based on how I was likely to react in high school, and I wouldn't react that way, and then he'd get frustrated and annoyed (probably with himself), and we'd both be like, okay, this is fun, let's do it again some time. (And, listen, there's definite potential here for reference to that observation attributed to Mark Twain -- "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could barely stand to have him around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." But in all self-reflective honesty, I stopped snapping at my father long before he stopped snapping at me. After all, why should we both get bugged?) So now we're more comfortable together for longer periods than we have been -- but that doesn't mean three months isn't a long time.
On the other hand: free room and board.
Plus, speaking purely from the point of view of a consumer, I miss living in the United States. No matter how accustomed I get to living here (and I am accustomed, as the fact that when I was in Boston I asked for something to go "to take away"), the groceries and the restaurants and the movies and the TV just aren't the same.
And now I think I'll go to the gym. Possibly catch a movie tonight.
Plus, see above re: love my parents, but my father and I are enough alike that we tend to start getting on each other's nerves after about 96 hours at the outside. Actually, though, that's been getting better lately -- I want to say as he's mellowed out, but I think it's as we've both come to settle into the roles of Grown Child and Parent Who Is Maybe Beginning To Age. He was trying hard for a while to keep in mind that I was an adult, but every visit would get to a point where he'd do or say something that would have been what he'd have said or done based on how I was likely to react in high school, and I wouldn't react that way, and then he'd get frustrated and annoyed (probably with himself), and we'd both be like, okay, this is fun, let's do it again some time. (And, listen, there's definite potential here for reference to that observation attributed to Mark Twain -- "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could barely stand to have him around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." But in all self-reflective honesty, I stopped snapping at my father long before he stopped snapping at me. After all, why should we both get bugged?) So now we're more comfortable together for longer periods than we have been -- but that doesn't mean three months isn't a long time.
On the other hand: free room and board.
Plus, speaking purely from the point of view of a consumer, I miss living in the United States. No matter how accustomed I get to living here (and I am accustomed, as the fact that when I was in Boston I asked for something to go "to take away"), the groceries and the restaurants and the movies and the TV just aren't the same.
And now I think I'll go to the gym. Possibly catch a movie tonight.
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Consolation prize, I know.
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You want to come to Cleveland on purpose? Wouldn't it make more sense for me to drive out and see you some time?
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And for the record, there will be a large, brown, flightless bird in Chicago Sept. 6-7, Amtrak willing.
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