when the road gets dark and you can no longer see

I'm reading To Love, Honor and Betray: The Secret Life of Suburban Wives because it was a bargain book and looked interesting. And it is.

My mom called Thursday night and told me that my dad had sent her carnations (her favorite) to work that morning and in the afternoon, called her and told her not to start dinner until he got home that night. He came home with salad, dinner, and dessert for them to share from our favorite restaurant in Rochester.

Neither of my parents are big on celebrating the people they love simply because of the date but he never forgets her birthday, never forgets Valentine's Day or Mother's Day. He does dishes for her, he vacuums, he helps her clean the house. Every now and then, she tells me what a good man he is and he tells me how lucky he knows he is to be with my mother, which, even though I've seen the more unpleasant sides to the both of them, I've known that goodness in the both of them since day one.

The drive home from my grandfather's funeral was about 3.5 hours, most of which my parents and brother and I filled with talking. At one point, my dad said, "your mother and I are in it for the long haul." I was driving and as he said that, I looked in the rear view mirror and saw my mom reach over and put her hand on his and her head on his shoulder. That night when we got home, Mom & I went out for a cigarette (we caved for a few weeks), I asked if I could ask her a question, which my mom always replies to with "you most certainly can." I asked if they're in it for the long haul because they have debt or because they feel like they have to or because they want to be. She replied with a smile and said, "that last one." And I believe her.

I saw on some commercial or read on a greeting card or in a book somewhere that the best love a father can give his children is to love their mother. As I get older, I realize the truth in that more and more. My parents are good people. They're fallable people, they can be unhappy, they can be miserable. Hell, they can be whatever they want to be but they're still good people. And the times they're good to each other far outweigh the times they aren't.

Every now and then, I wonder what kind of person I'd be had my mother moved out when she said she was going to when my brother and I were younger. I remember sitting in their bedroom and her telling the both of us that she was going to look for an apartment of her own. I remember feeling horrible for her and I remember thinking, "what will Dad do?" He'd been unemployed for quite awhile and depressed for most of it. He used to say, "I'm gonna go for a drive" and I used to sit in the chair knowing that when he did that, he drove around Keuka Lake and I would sit there in the chair and try not to worry that he was gonna just drive right into the lake and that'd be it. But it's all I could ever think about.

My mom never did leave, my dad wound up getting a job, and despite that and tons of other rough spots, I do believe they're in it for the long haul because they want to be. As I'm reading this book, I smile now and then and think about how even if my mom had found herself wanting to have an affair, she hasn't. And I don't believe she ever will. I don't believe she resents my father, I don't believe she feels like she missed out on a better life, I don't believe she wishes she were someone else or married to someone else or not married at all. And I don't believe my father feels any of those things either.

When I start to wonder about what a different person I'd be had different things happened as I was growing up, I eventually remind myself that it's entirely pointless to do so. I believe in nurture more than I do nature. I grew up in a home with parents and a brother who have always loved me (even if I questioned that love, at times, I know it was there) and whom I've always loved. I don't think it would have been nearly the nurturing environment it was had my parents not been in it for the right reasons. And even if there were points where they wondered whether or not the "long haul" was in the cards for them, somewhere deep down, I think they knew it was. And is.