The Trio

The nurse pushes open the heavy doors and motions us through. My mom stuffs her book into her purse and stands even as I gather everything else to follow her back to my dad’s recovery area. The nurse leads us to his bedside and methodically reads aloud his post- surgical instructions. He smiles, awake but still faintly woozy as a doctor assures us all has gone well in this procedure needed for a larger surgery the following week.

It is just the three of us together this day, a rare configuration in our now large family. Then the feeling starts somewhere in between my shoulders and flutters shyly up each vertebrae, so softly and gently I first can’t identify it. But like a half remembered dream, it takes simple structure.

From my birth ( their firstborn) until the coming of my sister ( their second born) 15 months later, it had been just the three of us: my mom, my dad, and me. My earliest memories stretch back to this time of just the trio, and the feeling blooms into a warm satisfaction as I pin it down and recognize it; how it felt on the maidenhead voyage of the family. I roll it around and savor it as we load the car.

My mom does not like to drive in big city traffic and my dad is still under the effects of anesthesia, so I drive them through town to an IHOP where my dad looks forward to ending his surgical fast.

Although their hard work has given them a very comfortable lifestyle, they are both delighted this place offers a generous senior citizen discount. And no, the waitress tells my dad, although I am retired now, I cannot qualify for a senior citizen’s discount until I am 55.  I smile, mostly to myself, and watch them interact.

The joking back and forth and the wry give and take between them have been honed for over 53 years. I realize with a start that they are both older than my grandparents were when I first started thinking of them as elderly.

My mom hands me her tea glass, imploring me to take a sip, just to see if it tastes right, and I notice the crook in the first joint of her index finger is now also mine. My dad makes a play on words just as the same pun comes into my mind, chuckling at his own joke in a laugh that could be the blueprint of my own.

We stand to leave and  gather things again, but not before my mom has tried to get me to eat food from her plate because she doesn't think my salad was enough, while my dad checks the ticket carefully, ensuring the discount for the two of them has been correctly applied.

As I pull the keys from my purse, my mom pats my shoulder and thanks me again for the help I’ve given them today; tells me for the umpteenth time she doesn’t know what they’d do without me.

The reality, though, is that although our family is now grown large and I once fiercely fought for my independence from these two, I still don’t know what I’d do without them.