Familiar

I'm looking back at the day just past and thinking what a fine thing it is to have a family that is reasonably familiar and familial. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing that happened today, which made it a good day.

I was doing my weekly run to Serene and then I thought to call my father up. "Hoy dad, where are you?"

Grouchy perturbation. "Waiting for your mother, she's late, I don't know where she is. She's supposed to be here!"

You don't expect that sort of reply. So I went, "Errm, where exactly are you?"

"Buying lunch! And I've bought the lunch and I'm waiting for here because she went shopping! If she gets here, we'll be home in about ten minutes. Where are you?"

Well, at least I knew he was about ten minutes from home. Since he's a fast driver, that makes it a fairly large radius though. I made a fateful decision. "I'll be there at 1 pm, see you!" And I hung up.

I grabbed some food of my own and drove over. Yes, they were late. But that was compensated for by the chance to help my mother stash the groceries away, sit down over a meal, chat a bit, and in general do the sort of thing I haven't done for years — have lunch with my parents at home, instead of some restaurant somewhere; lunch instead of dinner, in a house that used to be my home.