Parenthood for Seniors

I keep in touch with my folks; nice to have that opportunity as they are both older than dirt now. The other day mom was calming down after what she called a terrible time. That could mean anything from dad trying to fix something to dad fixed something.

Mom was watching the morning news and they were going on about the floods in Hawaii, more specifically the story about the dam that burst. The headline being reported, One body found, six missing as mud, debris released on Kauai. Kauai is the island where my sister lives. ( link via title bar )

Mom dialed my sister’s phone number and got the typical answering machine message; not very comforting to a distraught mother worried about her daughter being swept down to the ocean never to be seen again. It might have been five in the morning Florida time; that would make it the middle of the night in Hawaii. Several attempts to contact my sister, leaving messages on the damn answering machine, were taking a toll on my folks.

My sister must have heard the phone ringing off the hook in her sleep and got up to hear some of the frantic messages as she called mom and dad to let them know she was okay. Had she known about the flood waters and the dam break, she might have gotten on her surf board and ridden it to the beach just to see if she could.

Minutes spent worrying about one of your children, those eternities of doubt, are not properly explained in the parenthood owner’s manual. Maybe those pages were intentionally removed by the Author as Adam and Eve left the garden. In case you haven’t figured it out; the moment you become a parent you enter into a never ending position of having to love, care for and yes, worry.