parents do the darndest things

I'm in my 30s, I'm unemployed and I live with my parents.

But unlike George Costanza, I haven't lived with my parents (beyond a weekend here and a week there) for over 10 years. So this prolonged stint of cohabitation with the people who gave me life has been... like a safari game drive.

Everyday, I'm tempted to write about some peculiar mannerism or absurdly hilarious conversation that takes place with or between my parents. What are they doing? Were they always like this? What in the world...? I imagine myself a wildlife photographer, dressed in bush leaves, covertly viewing the secret life and habits of exotic creatures.

Not everything is new. Yet even the familiar, once recalled to mind, engenders a different reaction than a decade ago. To be sure, there is still plenty of frustration or annoyance at how they don't do thing the right (ie. my) way, at how they don't already know things that are so patently obvious (ie. to me). But much more often, even the old habits and mannerisms seem funny or oddly interesting and, ultimately, really endearing.

A lot has happened to them, to me, to us over the last 10 years. I doubt I love my parents any more or less than I did in my 20s. But I do believe that I love them differently, with more gratitute and fewer stones in hand.