Airport

The thing to know about my eldest daughter is that when she is excited and nervous, she becomes a dick. 

The thing to know about me, is that when I am tired and hungry orwhen you talk to me while I am driving (it is my favorite thinking time) I become a dick

The car making its way through early morning traffic to Boston, so Lyd could catch a flight, was full of dicks.

After parking in the lot and finding where the fuck we were supposed to be, we limped our way to her terminal. Driving so far hurts my still healing foot.

Lyd is afraid of escalators and we only had the escalator option at one point. I won't deny that I was frustrated and did refer to the escalator as a "motherfucking escalator" as I urged her to get on it.

The other escalators we had to take had a steep stair option running along side them. While taking the escalator, when I passed Lyd as she trudged up the stairs, it was very difficult for me not to smile at her and give her the finger as I smoothly moved past her and up.

I didn't do it, but the thought made me laugh. The laughter turned my morning around. I stopped feeling like a dick.

It has been a rough summer in many ways despite her any achievements. Sometimes I firmly believe that the human animal is wired for hardcore parenting for about 16 years. After that you really start to understand why some creatures eat their offspring. 

I have been hardcore parenting Lyd for 21 years at the end of this month.

I am sitting in a little cafe overlooking the plane she is on while I write this. She will be gone for a week and it will be a much needed break for all of us. 

I will sit here until the plane takes off. Although I need this break, although I am tired and although have entertained the thought of driving her off in a snarling rage or even perhaps consuming her (actually no) I will never stop being her parent. 

So I sit here and wait

Balls

In some traditions, at a birth, an important family member will whisper some special first words into the child's ear.

Usually they are certain prayers or words of welcome.

At this moment in my life I would not be at all surprised if the first words to be reverently uttered into my newborn ear was the phrase,

"Deflated balls."

Seriously, all I have been hearing about for the past several months, almost constantly, has to do with Tom Brady and the deflated balls.

I have become a pro at conversational detachment-I am Horst's daughter after all.

If a person makes mention of Minecraft you tube videos, Star Wars the Old Republic, any sport, politics or whenever Horst starts to talk,  my brain automatically defaults into detachment mode.

I may look interested. I will nod in all the right places, but in my head I will be doing other things, creating stories, planning a hair washing or praying to whatever deity that may be listening that the speaker will be stricken with a sudden case of pharyngitis.

I believe that this is why after all these months of deflated ball talk, it was just last night during dinner, B at it again about Tom's deflated balls, I finally put two and two together and snickered.

"It's not funny!" B snarled icily.

Months of enduring talks about deflated balls in silence,  I laugh for the first and only time.

He will not even give me that.

In my family, hearing loss is common later in life.

I do so look forward to my dotage.