Parents...and the passing of the years...

I'm not a very inquisitive hobbit. I don't ask questions about other people's lives very much. I take what is said as what is needed to be said and leave it at that. For example, I shared a flat with Laid Back Guy for about 4 years and I knew him for at least 4 before that but it was only comparitively recently that I learned that his mother was dead. He never spoke about her, directly or in passing, and I left it at that. If I needed to know, I would have been told.

The same has been true of my parent's ages. If I needed to know, I would have been told. My parents were there, part of the fixtures and fittings, so to speak. I couldn't imagine a time before them or after them. They are as permanent as the mountains.

It was my mother's 70th birthday today and I didn't know. I knew that today was her birthday, but I didn't know which one. It didn't really matter. Mum'll have a birthday this year, next year and in ten years time and so on. I suppose that if her age wasn't defined then she couldn't get any older. So when my sister told me that today was her 70th I was shocked. Not only because I'd missed a landmark birthday but because 70 is old. I can't imagine mum being old. It doesn't fit my image of her. I see her about on average twice a year and don't notice any real change, maybe her hair is a bit whiter, but that's all. I speak to her regularly and get updates on how my aunts and uncles are doing, mainly her older brothers and sisters and what age related illness the have but nothing about herself, so I assume no problems. Maybe I should ask.

As for my father, I learned his date of birth last year when I took it into my head to get him a birthdate paper for his birthday. Same story. The man's unstoppable, so long as he doesn't put his back out. He drives tens of tousands of mile a year all over Ireland making slighly dodgy deals. I've seldom seen him happier than when I saw him at Christmas, a bit greyer but still with more hair than me. When my birthday comes around at the end of the month I'll be half his age, 32, and I wish I had half his energy.

But now their ages are fixed. Each year is now n+1 and I now know their days are quite literally numbered. I feel like I'm living in a house that is on a cliff that's being undercut by the sea. I have to put up with it but I don't like it. I can't imagine the landscape without that house but I now know that the sea is going to calim it eventually.

Blogging on and off since January 2004.