Today is my dad's 87th birthday—feel free to send him happy birthday karma. Here he is with eight-month-old Max.
The fact that my dad is 87 is awe-inspiring.
It also scares the heck out of me.
I don't call or visit him nearly as much as I should; explaining the reasons for that would require several cases of red wine and extensive psychotherapy. But one of them is surely this: I distance myself from my father now to mentally prepare myself for the day when he will be gone. I am inherently terrified of being left alone in this world without my parents. I will have Dave, of course, and my sister, but otherwise, the weight of raising a kid with special needs will lie solely on our shoulders. Dave's family has never been there for us in the selfless way that my parents have.
Raising a kid with special needs thrusts you into being a mature, über-responsible parent, one who has to deal with big concerns, big problems, big doctors, all the biggies. Yet I continue to take comfort in knowing my mother and father are there for me, and that I myself am still someone's child.
