Caroline is traveling.
She sent me a text yesterday morning,
just a quick hello.
“Lucerne is beautiful,”
she writes and sends some truly lovely pics to prove.
I smile with only a slight twinge of jealousy.
It’s been a long scholastic year for her too
and she really does deserve the break.
Good for her I think unsarcastically.
Donnal was out and about yesterday afternoon.
She was running errands, checking off items on the list
of things to do before she leaves for her big trip.
She would have denied what I knew to be true,
that our “conversation” was item number eleven.
“You’ll need to clean all the bathrooms.
Don’t forget the middle hallway and the understairs toilets.
The kitchen and the den will need a thorough mopping weekly.
And please, please, please,
remember to wipe down the sink and run the disposal every day.
You know how the bugs get if there’s any crumbs.”
Yes, actually, I do know.
In fact, I might take offense at the idea she thinks I need to be reminded.
Of course, I’d have to be listening to take offense at her list of the things
she thinks I need to be reminded of,
the list of tasks she is rattling off
as though she is the only one who ever does anything
to take care of my father and his house.
She continues to drone,
and I pay only enough attention to murmur the reasonably expected
barely commital “uh-huhs”
at the seemingly appropriate intervals.
Then Donnal drops the inevitable line,
the one that always brings me back into her unwilling audience,
the one that drives home the reason for the entire
abso-freaking-lutely insulting and offending lecture.
“If you just keep up on all that,
it’ll be so much easier for me when I get back.”
“Uh-huh.”
It’s a good thing that high-boil seething does not transmit across phone calls.
It’s the beginning of summer.
For those of us who aren’t retired
(two thirds of this particular aging sister trio),
those who still work in the educational field,
it’s the start of the long awaited, hard earned summer break,
prime summer.
This is the second summer in a row that Donnal has done this,
pre-emptively carved out six weeks of prime summer for personal travel.
Without a word to either Caroline or me,
back in November (just before she went on her six week winter trek),
Donnal just blocked out six weeks to travel in prime summer.
Lovely.
I work the education calendar full time.
Caroline works the same calendar half days.
Donna is fully retired, has been for over fifteen years now.
In other words, Caroline and I have restrictions on when we can take vacation.
Donnal’s life is way more fluid.
If any one of the three of us takes a vacation,
the other two have to split the third one’s Dadcare.
If two of us are gone at the same time,
the third one has to go all-Dadcare all the time.
I was sincere last week when I told Caroline not to worry,
not to feel guilty leaving me sole care of Dad for a week
while she takes her trip.
It’s not her fault that her bargain travel package is only available
during a week overlap with Donnal’s mega-trip.
Caroline travels on a budget.
I don’t travel much because of my budget.
Donnal, on the other hand…
Donnal will be cruising to I don’t care where
for six weeks on one of those lovely small cruise ships.
You know, the kind with suites only
and personal butlers for all.
(She’ll be “ma-am”-ed near to death.)
Donnal’s trip will cost more than my annual salary.
I’m mostly not proud of my resentment,
but I rather lose the guilt when she just casually says,
“If you just keep up on all that,
it’ll be so much easier for me when I get back.”
It’s so incredibly self-centered of her,
so damnably entitled.
Oh, Ann, do a bunch more work
(which I falsely imply you’re not already doing your parts)
so that things are easier for me when I return exhausted
from six weeks of being waited on hand and foot.
Just before she puts a line through this task of reminding me of my duties,
she makes that little conversational gasp,
that sound of some thing very important popping
to the forefront of a mind juggling so many other very important things -
“Oh yes, and don’t forget,
the DNR papers are in the red file on the living room table,
just in case you need them.”
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