A phone call to my Dad
This picture was taken year (ish) after my mom and dad first met (and there is no hidden meaning that the photo looks like its split in two, though it is poignant)
I don't talk on the phone very much with my Dad, well I don't talk on the phone very much at all, but with Dad, even more sparingly. Most of the time there's a weird delay when you talk to him, a gap, like you're on a long distance call from the 1970s. Its because he talks into the receiver and the part of the phone that is for listening is far away from his ear. Dad developed this habit in the first place by being a Dr. and recording patient's notes into a recorder. He talks like this in large segments covering all sorts of topics that bleed into each other with hardly any pauses between. I have become really good at being able to tell when the phone is back near his ear. Its a small window, and if I don't jump in there, the phone goes back into the primary position. During that small window I have the chance to reply to all the topics, and I have to do that in a big chunk with hardly any space between, otherwise the phone goes back to the primary position.
With that in mind, I called him yesterday, which is rare due to the above, and he began asking if I’d received the tornado kit he sent, and then went into warning me again about cancer-causing cell phone usage, and then about his upcoming road trip with mom. I noticed a softening of his voice that is rare, and an almost confessional tone. He told me he was really looking forward to the trip with her, and that they were getting really good at trips and having a lot of fun. He went on to tell me that he thinks they've rediscovered what it was in the very beginning, when they first met, that drew each of them to the other. Also that they are both focusing on the positives about each other, instead of the negative, which he admitted they’d both got really good at. If I had to pull just one quote from the conversation, it would have to be this one, which is referencing how frustrated he used to be with mom that she wasn't interested in reading the New York Times every day: "After all, I didn't marry your mother in order to find out and discuss what was going on in Czechoslovakia."
It was about as tender a conversation we've had in years. I also told him that perhaps now mom did know more about Czechoslovakia. He laughed and said that she sure has gotten better about calling him on his %^&*$#@! and that he didn't know where these trips were leading, but they are laughing about themselves about things they would never been able to laugh about years ago. He also lets her help with the driving on these new trips, which he never never let anyone do when I was growing up. So, times, they are a changin'.
I suppose what I'm getting at, though I would never suggest anyone take the road my parents have taken to get to where they are right now, is that perhaps people in the later chapters of their lives can come back together and rekindle the affection and appreciation for each other that has been dormant and buried by, in my parent's case, a couple of kids, a couple of pets and a few marriages and divorces.