Visiting My Parents

I got up on Friday and went down to Salem to see my parents before heading down to visit my 84 year old Nana. I was dreading the first part of this visit as I wanted to avoid all family drama on this trip. Driving into the old neighborhood I consoled myself by thinking that if things went south I could always get into the car and drive away.

Upon arriving at my parents house I noticed how antiseptic it looked inside. My mom cleans constantly and helped lead to my OCD concerning same when I was younger. My parents both looked good and we sat down around the kitchen table to talk. The conversation was actually fairly normal aside from why I had not broadcast that I was going to Aunt Pam’s for dinner last night. My dad made an attempt to bring up the “my brother and I should reconcile” topic but only briefly. He abandoned the topic after I noted that the same was not possible at this time.

After we chatted my mom asked me to look through my old closet upstairs. It is filled with 24 years of my lift that I was unable to fit into my old Honda Civic when I headed to Florida. I sifted through old photographs, looked at old comic books and saw that the lava lamps from college still looked like they were in pretty good condition. I grabbed a few of the photo albums and left the rest behind for another day. My mom also gave me some things for Becky. I am glad I brought the large suitcase.

We then drove down to Andover, Massachusetts to see my Nana. My parents went to run errands while I sat and talked to her for about an hour. She gave me a huge hug when I came in the door. She was in a very good mood and told me about her trips she was going on and showed me around her new place. It was nice visiting with her. She was very proud of her little condo but was sad my Nanu did not live a day in it. She misses him a lot and he will have been dead for six years on November 11th. We used to share a birthday as we were born on the same day.

After visiting my parents and I went to Tripoli’s for pizza and cannolis. The pizza was amazing and the cannoli was very good. I had wanted to grab some food from here before I came up north and was glad to have the chance to follow through with that plan. After lunch I hung around for a little longer before driving back up to Manchester. I was glad that the visit with my parents had gone reasonably well.