'Rent Control

All it was was a trip home. I just got back to LA, after an unsuccessful standby attempt on Friday that involved a three-hour wait, running around O'Hare, and a really positive outlook prior to a last-minute plane de-sizing that meant 100-plus displaced passengers and no chance in hell for anyone hoping to go standby.

I went back to my parents' house, changed into pajamas, and didn't change out of them until this morning when I got up at 5 to try again to catch a plane. I will never understand people who can go to bed after midnight, as I did, and wake up chipper at 5 (as my dad did, and does all the time). I haven't gotten a whole lot of sleep since Ariel was born, but that is soooo different from this morning's process of putting on lights! and getting dressed! and leaving the house at 5 AM instead of stalking around a dark apartment, fetching "babas" while half asleep. People like my dad don't tell you that your eyes will actually hurt when you rub water into them at that hour.

Though I got back here in the morning, I just woke up from a three-hour recovery nap. I'm not entirely sure what day it is.

Why, oh why, was this little trip home so exhausting? I wish there was a simple answer. But there are, I guess, a few simple factors that worked against me:

- Ariel got croup the day after we arrived, which meant a few days of watching and listening to him pant and gasp and wheeze for air, his chest rising and falling as rapidly as if he'd run a marathon, though he was lying still.

- Elan came down with a 24-hour virus that included only high, steady fever, washing him with a fatigue so heavy that he barely raised an arm from the couch in the living room for its duration, analgesics doing little to cool his small, lithe body down, his skin so hot that even the touch of warm water made him shiver and beg for mercy.

- I had way too many people to see in too short a time, and I wasn't willing to miss seeing any of them at least once. This meant that every free moment to rest that I had was spent feeling guilty, berating myself for wasting the opportunity to bond with friends and family I rarely get to see.

- My parents were really into the day trips. And it was bloody hot.

- The post-nasal-drip I had before I left not only didn't improve, but seemed to get worse with each day of exposure to new pollens.

- Y has a new, company-issued cell phone that's more or less a Blackberry, and he's glued to it 24-7, checking his email even at 1 AM, on the short walk between the theater where we saw "The Devil Wears Prada" (cute!) and the car we used to drive there. Watching this new-found addiction develop was not only incredibly annoying, but made me tired every time.

Despite everything, I had a nice time in Chicago, and the kids seemed to have a ball with my parents, which is my main priority. They played hard, searched for LOTS of bugs (cicadas! ooh, fun!), had nightly teddy-bear picnics with my mom, caught fireflies, got soaked in Millennium Park, and generally drank and ate more Slurpees and ice cream than I'd normally allow in a two-month span of time.

But my father seemed perpetually disappointed, because few of our days there unfolded exactly as planned. I've learned to expect the unexpected with toddlers, and I thought my parents, after having raised five themselves, would have been on board. Instead, my dad, who had planned his time together with E and A to a tee, appeared upset every time they got upset, which, at their ages, could be several times a day and the mere result of one looking at the other funny (or yanking his hair, biting his arm, or trying to shove him down the laundry chute, in equal measure).

I felt like my dad kept taking his frustrations out on me, which I didn't understand, and faced more parental criticism in the microcosm of the week than I had in the almost eight years since I'd lived with them. This, among other reactions, made me "TY-URD," as Ariel would say.

Last night, before hitting the sack, I addressed the issue with my dad, and we had a heartfelt talk (crying - me, shrugging - him) in which I told him as much. He tried to explain where he was coming from, as a grandparent who had never known his own very well, thousands of miles from me, Y, and the boys, constantly feeling like he was missing out on being a bigger part of their lives. This sense of loss led him to feeling like he'd grown apart from me, which - I'm guesstimating a little here - compelled him to try and compensate by doing a whole lot of parenting in a small, condensed amount of face-time, as well as to want every minute of our week to be perfect. In the spirit of relative brevity, I'm simplifying majorly. But moral of the story: When you are close with your parents, having kids and living far away from said parents is emotionally difficult, complicated, and draining, and the toll it takes may, at times, manifest itself via uncharacteristic or inappropriate interactions with one another, when finally given the chance.

I haven't written about this issue yet, the one of living so far from my parents, although it's always paramount in my daily life. I haven't touched upon it, because, well - it's touchy. Though I'm otherwise happy in LA, being apart is tough on me and tough on them, and there is no easy solution. I was never surprised that it was this hard - I was only surprised by my parents' response.

You see, I was brought up with the mantra "You can do anything you set your mind to," as mother's milk. My parents always instilled my brothers and I with the confidence that our potential was endless, that life was huge and just waiting to happen to us, if we'd only show some interest. They think big: if you show an interest in cinema at age twelve, you're going to Hollywood one day (he did)! If you keep the frog legs from the science class dissection in a zip-lock bag to study further at home, hell, you're not weird - you're going to cure cancer one day (he probably will)! Teenage angst makes you argue with us - can you say future law-yuh? You might like Engineering? Don your purple because we hear N-O-R-T-H-W-E-S-T-E-R-N calling!

Me? I was going to be a famous artist or designer with my own company, label, whatever, probably living abroad in Europe, wearing all black and earning regular quotes in Vanity Fair.

My parents, and I give them plenty of credit for this, never judged or criticized that which we showed a propensity towards, or tried to mold those aspirations. They have always supported anything my brothers and I wanted to do, so long as we aimed for the stars in so doing. The only expectation of us was that we attempt to self-actualize, to use any G-d-given gifts at our disposal, to make life matter.

NEVER was there the stipulation, oh yeah, um, PS- you better live next door to us!

I had NO IDEA that I wasn't allowed to move away from Chicago. They'd always made it seem that the world was my oyster. I oystered, to California, some of my brothers' lives took them here as well, and suddenly "Just Do It" became "Are You Trying to Kill Us?!"

Ok, I exaggerate - a little. But I did hear things like, "Well, it's just that, the daughter traditionally stays near the parents."

This. From the least traditional couple I'd ever met. From the liberal, ex-hippies who were equally feminist, who'd always taught me that my aspirations were no less valid than my brothers', nor was their confidence in my future success.

The boys move away near their wives' families, but the daughter traditionally moves back home to be near her parents.

It was as if I'd had the wind knocked out of me. I'd simply had no idea. Nor did it really make much sense to me, as a blanket statement. Not that I didn't want to live near my parents - I adore them. But I'd never felt like it would kill them to be apart from me, either. They are both busy, accomplished professionals, with millions of extra-curricular interests between the two of them, the kind of couple that doesn't really sleep much or watch a lot of TV because there is always something more productive they could be doing, even if it's just biking 30 miles through an Amish cornfield because hell, they've got a Monday morning off, what on earth are they supposed to do with that time, go to lunch? ARE YOU MAD?!

They are hardly the sweet, feeble, live-through-their-children, retire-to-matching-rocking-chairs at 5 pm to nibble bowls of Cherry Garcia and catch the evening news while waiting for the phone to ring kind of Granny and Gramps you might expect to make such a statement. I was never given the impression that a classic dose of Jewish parental guilt was just around the corner.

But they'd taught me to be fearless - to handle changes in life with a brave smile and wide-eyed optimism, to learn, rather than complain. So when my life took me from one coast to another, where I had no personal roots or history, where I'd be starting a new chapter without a clue where it would go - I put on a brave smile and chose to be optimistic. I worked hard at getting to know the natives and, even though I sometimes feel like a fish from a different pond, I make myself focus on the good. I talk to my mom and/or dad most days of the week, we try to see each other at least every three months, and they read this blog daily, which, they say, helps.

I miss them every single day and am hopeful that the separation is only temporary, in one way or another. I hate that it sometimes gets too painful for any of us to handle elegantly. But I'm in chin-up mode.

Reese Witherspoon is "just tryin' to matter," and I hear that. I'm just trying to self-actualize. I'm so thankful for the tools my parents gave me, the ones that make that feel possible, even amid the chaos of young motherhood.

And I feel better after my nap this afternoon. I hope my daddy takes one, too. Thanks for a great week, guys. I love you.