A visit with aging parents is fraught with unique challenges…as is time spent with young grandchildren. Many times when I visit Clara, George and Henry in Ft. Worth, I struggle to explain (in terms they can understand) why they can’t do things lest they harm themselves. Their constant reply is “why?” causing me to grasp for a reasonable and simple explanation that will make sense to their young, developing sense of logic. Sometimes the issue is trying to encourage them to do something that is good for them…finish their meal, take a nap, pick up their messes. I hear “why” quite a bit—I’m sure you’ve all heard a toddler ask in that very particular way of theirs, the innocence, not insolence, in their sweet voices. However, It can be exhausting to answer that question repeatedly in a three hour babysitting stint!
Sometimes, aging parents ask “why” many times over as well. My 86-year-old father often struggles to understand why he has to see so many different physicians. With both parents, it’s often a challenge for them to even hear me and understand the points that I am trying to get across regarding their lifestyle and healthy choices. I know they pretend to understand on many occasions but in reality, they can’t hear me and didn’t want to ask me to repeat myself!
But every extra day, moment, lunch, dinner, coffee, trip to the store, visit to the doctor’s office with my parents or in-laws is so precious. Just as with the grandchildren, knowing I’ll never get those toddler moments back, so it is with Tom, Sadako, Bob and Jeanette. When I was in Albuquerque last week, I made a point to ask my father about summers in Taiwan and my memory of a youth camp for which he’d been a counselor/leader and we had been his tag-along children. I couldn’t recall how many summers we’d been in residence at the camp (was it just one impactful memory or repeated occurrences?) and I was pleasantly surprised at how much he remembered and could fill in the gaps for me.
When Mom and Dad joined us at my in-laws for dinner on our last night in New Mexico, he and my 90-year-old father-in-law chatted like old friends. Bob asked Dad about his first trip as a missionary to Taiwan and my brother and I learned some things we’d never known. Dad made his first voyage across the Pacific Ocean on a Chinese freighter, the only white man on board. The ship departed from Seattle, stopping in Alaska, Japan, and other destinations to offload rice before finally depositing him in Taiwan, about four weeks later. I cannot even imagine that journey as a 22-year old, recent college graduate, leaving his family, friends and culture behind to embark on a spiritual mission for which he’d answered the call.
I’m so glad I got to hear that story.
Triple C Camp kids, Taiwan 1976 (a young, bespectacled Ruth, far left