My Parents Ruled By Apathy
I commit to being more present for my children
“This town — it just wasn’t a great place to grow up,” I said to my friend. It was sometime around our high school graduation, and we’d known each other since I’d moved to the town at age ten. She’d lived there all her life, and she nodded in agreement.
“Hey!” said my mother from the other side of the kitchen counter. I hadn’t meant for her to overhear, but she had and she’d taken personal offense, albeit passing, at my comment.
Maybe my parents had thought the town was an adequate place to grow up when they’d moved me there. They had been renting a house from my grandparents since I was a baby, and had been eager to purchase one of their own — but there was no way they’d have be able to afford one in the wealthy suburban town where we’d lived at the time. Maybe they’d done ample research, considered and balanced their options, and examined the pros and cons prior to choosing this particular town.
Probably not, though.
Probably, they’d picked the house they liked the best and could afford, and trusted everything else would just work out.
Truth is, though, it hadn’t — not for me, and after so many years, they still couldn’t see it.
