In the meantime though (possibly because of the emptier house, my recent absence and my rather contemplative state of mind of late) I am suddenly noticing things about my parents.
Like the fact that for every year that I get older, they do too (I know, it's taken me longer than most to come to this realisation). By the time I am thirty, they will be well into what one euphemistically calls their twilight years.
The shock of realising my parents are human beings who are aging is supported by certain irrefutable evidence:
- The level of enjoyment they derive from cruising the streets around our house with the Neighbourhood Watch.
- The fact that they know not only all of our neighbour's names ('Kevin, Jade, Kevin. The one who drives the white Jeep. Jack's son. Lives next door to Ida and Louis. No of course you know Ida and Louis...') but also every piece of what could possibly be construed as gossip about their daily lives.
- BBC World is always on.
- I can no longer get a straight answer from either of them that does not involve the events of two preceeding hours, a few strange coincidences, random thoughts on a tangential topic and more names of neighbours. (Thanks, I was just wondering if Woolies stayed open till nine.)
- They bicker. Not the all-out, scream-the-house-down fights of my formative years (ah, an insight into the root of my many issues), but arguments about, for example, the whereabouts of the DSTV remote.
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