When I go home, Dad is busy with his new iPad. Instead of doing mindless puzzles, he reads the news on his new gadget, and learns how to use his new email. He is now even more absent than before. I look for him as I search the house, and finally find him in the kitchen behind the table, his eyes focused on the iPad. We exchange a few sentences over the weekend when I go home briefly. Just a few sentences and then I hug him and leave as he is busy helping the guy who is fixing the sink. My father holds his dirty hands away from me as he hugs me and then I leave with my sister who drops me off at the bus station.
My mother spends her Saturday at Virginia Beach for a conference. She tries crab cake and wears her new dark blue jeans. She doesn’t believe in jeans at 61, but she wears them anyway, encouraged by her children who tell her they fit her fine and make her look younger. Unlike my father who hasn’t changed a whole lot personally, my mother is an entirely different woman. She manages the finances, maintains and updates her work’s website, has started meeting new people and even trying new foods.
I see them briefly. We don’t exchange a whole lot. She is barely there and I am trying to study. She doesn’t make me carrot cake, doesn’t give me food to take back to the city, but says she will miss me and can’t wait until Thanksgiving. I miss my mother and father, the two who brought me to this country and told me it was for the best. And now I am trying to make the “best” out of it and they think I am trying to leave them, that I don’t want to be part of the family.
I miss them, and sometimes I miss myself.