MY TURN column
The Courier-Post
March 19, 2009
Through the window, I watched the ground fall away beneath seat 24C as my Spirit Airlines jet thundered into the night sky.
I was on my way to Jupiter, Fla., to see my octogenarian parents and complete a three-event visit: celebrate my mom's 81st birthday, my parents' 61st wedding anniversary and buy them a new computer. The possibility of attending a spring training baseball game would be a bonus event.
If timing is everything, mine was perfect. No sooner did I reach my destination as a March nor'easter barreled up the coast, belting South Jersey with ice and a foot of snow. I found myself out of harm's way in the Sunshine State, where my parents have enjoyed a healthy and active lifestyle for the past 15-years.
Dad drove his new Mercury Marquis (the official car of Florida) to pick me up at Palm Beach Airport.
"I hope you're visiting to celebrate, and not just bug me about my 11-year-old computer," he said after we exchanged a hug in the crowded concourse. I kept that part of my mission quiet for now.
In 1993, Mom and Dad boxed up their Cherry Hill belongings and relocated to a condo overlooking the 17th green of Indian Creek Golf Club. Both had retired from long professional careers and were now ready to relax, having seen their three boys married, established and raising families of their own.
Relax is a relative word when speaking of my parents. Once settled in, they did anything but settle down. Both began playing golf three times a week. Dad was elected president of the condo board of directors and joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary. Mom became a Eucharistic minister in the local church and volunteered at the hospital.
Oh, did I mention they both work during spring training at Roger Dean Stadium, home of the St. Louis Cardinals and Florida Marlins?
"We've been working all our lives," Mom has told me many times. "It's what your father and I do best."
On my flight down, I was seated next to a health and physiology professor from Lock Haven University.
"I hope you're right," I said, giving a mental nod to the prospect of duplicating their longevity. "Just trying to keep up is a challenge."
When we weren't going out to dinner (no early-bird specials for these two), I was able to spend quality time with them on a one-to-one basis because on any given day, the other was working.
I brought Mom a copy of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's "A Gift from the Sea" to read on her visits to the nearby beach. For Dad, it was a bottle of Macallan's 10-year-old scotch for sipping before dinner. Both gifts served as conversation sparkers.
A defining moment occurred one evening when Dad played a DVD comprising old family movies. Little of the color had vanished from the films or from our memories. Images of my parents in their late 30s, and my brothers and me as adolescents, brought warmth -- and a reality into focus.
As each new face appeared on the screen -- children, relatives, neighbors, business associates -- a storyline evolved until we had constructed a life history of our family.
From time to time I heard my parents whisper: "Gone two years now. . . have missed him these last three years. . . has it been five years already. . ."
Whenever I visit my folks, I like to walk the coral-colored sands along the Jupiter beachfront. The barrier island's turquoise waters, bordered by dune trails of sea grapes and mangrove wetlands, are the perfect setting for thinking and sorting out things. It was during one of those hikes that I again realized just how fortunate I am to have both my parents as active participants in my life. Their independence is a blessing. Their good health at 80 is near-miraculous. Their good company is comforting.
It's funny how after all these years we easily slip into our old roles of parent and child. My folks still demonstrate the concerns of elders, while I seem to morph into the eternal 12-year-old. Even during this visit I heard:
"Let me pull out the bed for you. Do you have enough pillows?"
"What kind of sandwich should I make you for lunch today?"
I may not have appreciated hearing it in my younger days; I must confess, at this point in my life, it is music.
Before I left, I was successful in convincing Dad to upgrade both his computer and his dial-up Inter net service. After some initial reticence, Mom reports that: "Your father was on the computer for three hours today. He's loving it!"
As I flew back to New Jersey amid a sky-cabin chorus of screaming babies, I wondered how many of them would someday grow up and make this trip to visit their parents in Florida.
I wanted to tell them to cling as tightly as they could to the parents holding them. The present time is all we really have, and sometimes there's not as much of it as you think.
When we landed, even the mountains of snow that greeted me could not diminish my sense of renewal. My trip was a debt I owed my soul -- and two others.
