“You only call me when you have a layover in the airport,” my mother likes to complain. “Thank goodness you travel so much or I’d never speak to you.”
This is a matter of perception. I think I speak to my mother more than I speak to anyone except Zac. My mother thinks we never speak.
It’s not that I’m so interesting; I’m just the child she can reach, my brother living in Saudi Arabia. My mother lonely.
I’m sitting in on an undergraduate limnology class: lectures on lake formation, water chemistry, the physics of waves and currents. After every class, I wish I could call my father, a microbiologist who studied water disinfection, and talk to him about what I’ve learned, what I don’t quite understand. I wish I could hear his voice; just for a minute, to hear him call me “Andg”—
Two years ago, my step-father recorded himself reading “The Night Before Christmas” in one of those big Hallmark books. I was visiting my brother and his family, and we all sat listening as my niece turned each page of the book, as my step-father’s voice filled the room. How happy he sounded. How many years that voice read to me every night. I looked at my brother. I think we were both crying.
My step-father visits every winter to go skiing. I love having him in our apartment, making him coffee for breakfast. I love that he brings a thick hardcover book to read. I love hearing him speak with Zac about computer things I can’t even begin to understand.
Every summer, I visit my step-mother in Indiana. I love that her refrigerator is always filled with Diet Dr. Pepper, that when I do laundry at her house, my clothes smell like they did in college. I love when she laughs at the television. I love listening to her in the morning speaking softly to her cat.
Because no matter how fraught your relationship, isn’t there always something special about your parents? Their voice or their face or the way they cook or the way they held your hand? The first people who loved you. The first people who made you miserable.
The truth is I call my mother from airports because I’m afraid of flying. I fly all the time, have flown since I was a baby, but I’m still terrified. I call her when I have layovers so I can hear her voice. I call her because I know one day I will stand alone in an airport terminal and wish I could hear her complain I never call.
Planet of the Blind 