Vagabond Parents

My parents moved. Again. This may sound like a relatively normal occurrence until you consider it's their fourth or fifth move in as many years. Perhaps you're thinking they're diplomats. Nope. Members of the military? Not. Let's cut to the chase. My dad is a builder. He builds homes and whenever a new house goes up that he likes better, he decides it's time to move. I can't tell you how maddening this is.

Did I mention the houses are usually on the same street? There's a row of them that overlook a golf course. They have literally lived on every house on the row. All the moves have been haphazard with my dad recruiting the help of migrant workers to throw their things into garbage bags and move them to the next abode. And this is just bizarre given the caliber of their belongings and that their moving into McMansions.

A couple of months ago my little sister called me in tears. "They're like teenagers!" she said. I put the TV on mute. Who? "They moved again and this time into a condo downtown!" she wailed. I was just home and no one had mentioned a move but since when did that matter? "Why do you care? You don't live there," I said. My sister explained that all of her things were in the house while she was on the West Coast studying for the bar. The irony here was that you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger slob than my little sister who kept most of her clothes on the floor and used her sense of smell to detect if they were clean. But in this case she was rightfully concerned about whether and in what condition she would find her belongings. I called my mom.

"What's going on?" I asked my mom. "Oh your father, he's crazy," she said. This was neither news to me nor helpful in assessing this latest uprooting. She said that he got an offer he couldn't refuse on the house and the buyers wanted to move in asap. I asked her if it was true that things were being moved in garbage bags to an as yet undisclosed location. She confirmed this with an exasperated sigh. I asked if I should come home and help. "You'll just get mad," she accurately prophesied. Then I asked where they were going and her mood brightened.

"We're moving into a condo like yours," she said. OK, this is a gross exageration. I live in a full-service Trump building overlooking the river. My dad had purchased two condos in a building with wood panelling that overlooked a mall. Big difference. But because both buildings had elevators and restricted access, my parents equated them. This, however, is more endearing than egregious in my book.

Fast forward to this week when I call my mom and she tells me they're moving again. Where to this time? Back to the same street they lived on before. "One of the tenants of the houses moved out so we're going back to the old neighborhood." If I haven't mentioned this before, I'll say it now. My mother is the epitome of eternal optimism. The Bush Administration should hire her as a spin doctor. No matter how bleak the situation, she'll spin it so the person is momentarily blinded by the silver lining on the big, ugly, dark cloud. When she was visiting during the blackout of 2003 and the sweltering heat threatened to suffocate us in our sleep then continued into the next afternoon, she excitedly suggested we board the bus. "We can see the city and it's air conditioned!" she exclaimed. After going up and down the stretch of Manhattan I cursed the mayor for taking so long to get power to the lower east side and my mom met my frustration with, "We're a part of history." I mean really.

So it came as no surprise when she regarded this latest transition not as one of life's big stressors but as a return to "normalcy." Thrust back into the boonies, a rural suburb of Houston, she expressed gratitude. "At least now I'll get my satellite TV back." Somethings go without saying but at the risk of stating the obvious, I didn't inherit my mother's positive outlook.