Same Old Dirt

There's a piece of dirt, up on a hill surrounded by high mountain desert named Santa Fe. It’s where no one, thirty two years ago wanted to live until Conde Nast found this city in mid-to-late 1990's. Now there's endless suburbs of high-end homes instead of ranches.
Our moms and dads worked here, and retired here. Their distant daughters and sons have made it - ‘the time’ to move back home.
This is coming home to Cammy, home already to me.
More big-box stores moved in, the dirt roads are now paved, and lit at night. Stars down the street instead of in the sky, so it goes. Such a difference a few decades can make along with great press coverage. The Adobe Disneyland for seasonal living of the well heeled had arrived to show the natives how to live.
Cammy's husband Dougie made the decision in the fall, that it's time to move from the southern California beach city to the land of dust just down the street from Cammy's mom. They both are now telecommuting for work.
It's been up to Cammy to figure out the physical move from the beach life of her wonderful So-Cal existence to the land of high desert dust on a mountain two days drive from So-Cal and just left of Texas. Cammy has her emotional baggage; her mom has her emotional baggage. Now the turf war of privacy and secrets begins.
Dougie thought he had her mom wired for sound and power. Yet, that mom shorted out emotionally to screw Dougie's plan to have an office outside the home, the mom’s guesthouse. From the start it was a short-term arrangement, yet that fact that not just anyone, but her son-in-law could see her life and secrets was reason enough to ream her daughter Cammy for having the idea. The verbal agreement to rent a backyard studio for her son-in-law’s telecommuting work would come to an abrupt and sudden halt bringing back every old argument, every old torment of the daughter-mother hostilities.
Still, between the deeply forgotten past and here-to-be soon present, the mind places tricks on the emotional responses to situations. A partial reversion to the young wild child daughter in temperament, health, and some impatient habits return without warning when in contact with her mom. Even though, the Adobe Disneyland forgot her, she remembers the old her, along with the mother-person of her past.
Wait until her mom gets the address. Waiting to deliver to the mom, the privacy, work-at-home, visiting time rules for when the distance down the street from the mom is not enough.
Done, Cammy rented a home with plenty of bedrooms for everyone's home office and rooms for living besides. Hoping that down the street would be far enough away from the mom.
Although they took their time, nearly two months before informing Cammy’s mother of the exact location of their rental, their privacy disappeared at once in the Adobe Disneyland. Deleting away the twenty-five years elsewhere it took to evolve to who and where she is today.

Introduction – House Daughters and Sons

Everybody has ONE... at least one parent that is. Some of us are lucky enough to start out with two parents. Then by a twist of fate, luck, or age, we have only one parent who is considered elderly, aged, or frail.
We are the caregiver who lives in the house or nearby. We are the ones who are first called upon, before strangers or siblings. We are the driver, the shopper, the housekeeper, the appointment planner. We are the ones who surrender our time to time, to fulfill a role that no community is prepared to completely, with dignity, oversight and positive outcomes in the societal ladder's wrungs of living a long life.
We are the house daughters and sons. We have part of life, and a responsibility to a part of another’s life that is reverting back in abilities while adapting to the limits of their body or their minds. Alternatively, some combination there of.
Mother’s give birth; the child leaves, makes a life of their own, and now returns. This is the house daughter or son who returns to the parent.
The purpose of these writing began when several old best friends chatted about each of their parent’s insanities, infirmities, and inabilities to cope. We decided to survive the experience together laughing. This is how best friends and their mothers adapt to living, aging and care giving. Show downs, shoot-outs, surrender and lessons to others on how to "shake their heads in disbelief and not show it" lessons. All the things nobody ever told us about surviving the as the house daughter or son.
Several are newbie’s to care giving and caretaking of a parent. I've been at it for over sixteen years and am considered, "the experienced care giver". My old friends and I are going to be living in the same city after nearly twenty-five years apart. This is going to be humorous ride as we attempt to enjoy the insanities of becoming our parent’s parent as the house daughter or son.