While you can’t go home…

I awoke with a start to a very vivid and somewhat disturbing nightmare. It’s rare that I recall what I dream about, actually very rare and that this was so vivid tonight. And after waking it took me a few seconds to adjust to the fact I’m in a strange hotel room, it’s past midnight local time and  I’m on the second day-is-the–worst jet lag. It was quite the start and 20 minutes later as I post what I’ve just written my heart is still racing.

OK, onto something else, last night over dinner a couple of us were discussing going home to the place of our childhood and how we act. When I head home to Guildford it gets a little scary how far back into childhood I can regress, and perhaps more importantly how quickly I regress.

It’s not nearly as bad as it used to be when mum was around, there are no “You should not be…” conversations, I’ve had them about rallying, motorcycles, how regular I am, going out in the cold with wet hair, people I’m dating (or with one infamous conversation about who I’m married too, I’ll share one day), dental health, cats, where I live, doctors visits and going mountain biking on a Sunday morning. These were all conversations I had in my 30’s and briefly before she passed my 40’s too.

And they usually end with “Da Vid, I just want you to be happy…” I miss mum every day.

I’ve said before about how my parents were always about 40 in my mind. Dad has a full head of dark hair, youthful broad shoulders and so on.  Every time I arrive at Heathrow I want to ask this old man that’s come to get me where dad is.  I never do because as soon as I see him I start revert back to the role of being his child. It’s very strange.

It only takes a couple of moments and I’m over the surprise of being greeted by a man in his 70’s rather than the father who used to throw me over his shoulder (try that today and we’ll see just how good that hernia surgery really was).

My friend Min thinks he has about the sexiest accent ever, thick Scottish gracefully diluted by over 50 years in England. She once described him as “Sean Connery, but sexier”, I still don’t think he knows how to react to a woman close to 40 years his junior hitting on him.

The flip side of me seeing my parents as 40 year olds, is they still saw me as a 8 year old some times.  While time passes the roles we each see ourselves in have not changed in quite the same way, it’s a nice excuse for me and my brother to be immature and make fart jokes over at the dinner table and, I’m rather OK for that.

There has been some changes and revisions to the tried and tested Father-Son relationship, there is a certain amount of denial on my part (and my brothers) about how old I am, and therefore how old he is. This is a denial that’s easier to keep going when I’m in England, it’s not like I get my washing done and all my meals cooked, but I do have way fewer responsibilities when I’m there. Typically there is something that needs doing, minor jobs like laying some vinyl floor or trying to open up a slow draining sink, but even then I’ll be told dad will get round to taking care of it, but some how I’ll take care of it when I’m there.

I think with mum this regression went even further. Despite that fact that both my brother and I are only a couple of years apart and he has a wonderful daughter and awesome wife, while I don’t. Mum still expected me to be the boring, sensible one out of the pair.

While my brother has not exactly used the license that mum gave him to rave it up over the last decade or so. But I don’t think mum would have shown much surprise at Stephen coming home from a party at dawn, while I would get the Spanish inquisition for getting in 20 minutes late from the pub. Growing up my brother was the wildest one of the pair of us, but that’s fairly relative. I was the boring Dungeons and Dragons player on a Saturday night, while he went to the roller disco and stayed out all late.

OK, I admit that “roller disco” does not exactly bring up images of all night raves and dropping piles of ecstasy, but this is Guildford in commuter belt Surrey we are talking about.

It’s relative, my brother had one or two parties at the house when my parents were away, but that was about it. We were both pretty good and did not give my parents much strife. However mum always said he caused them far worry than I did growing up, but I took over later in life.

I think it was my racing was the one that scared here the most. She knew a couple of my friends that died racing and never understood why I would ever do something like that. She once said “I’d expect Stephen to do that, but not you”, I asked why that was and she never really answered clearly. There was something about me being the sensible one, but she never elaborated on that.