My Parents: a follow up

The “My Parents” blog from a few days ago wasn’t my first online observation of the two most delightfully complicated people in my life, but being The Dears’ Number One Fan, my mother subscribes dedicatedly to this blog. This, in turn, caused the following email:

“From: ursula yanchak
Subject: blog…parents
Date: September 4, 2007 4:49:46 AM EST
To: natalia@thedears.org

OK…so we got home and there on the floor in the kitchen is a sewing needle with thread in it….Where is this from? The sewing kit!!! ….that Neptune had thrown on the floor and I had hurriedly put back together.
Well I truly enjoyed Murray’s cooking, as did Dad. I guess you need stuff to write about. Nice water pic. Send it to me with the [others] please.
What route did you finally take home? We got turned around once on country roads and ended back in Haliburton where we started, laughing. There was a Hwy # marked on the map right over a slight jog in the road and a road sign to Gelert with tiny arrows pointed in both directions.
love MoM”

I remember when I was researching about starting a blog (yes, I know, I’m such a control freak that I actually researched something that thrives on being spontaneous), someone warned of the dangers of writing about your family, friends and co-workers. They cautioned of the repurcussions, of people being offended by the honesty of your diary. But really how can I resist writing about my parents? They are the characters in the story of my life that I know the best, that I care about deeply, and that can drive me crazy suddenly and for no apparent reason. It’s almost like its too easy to write about the things they do, as if that license were part of the relationship; I can expect to deliver a frenzied, panicked, all-encompassing, love-driven attention to Neptune one day, too. Maybe I already do, she’s just too un-jaded to notice.

What was the other thing? Oh yeah, all that being said, what’s up with our parents and maps? They are obsessed! We spent days at the cottage discussing the best route home, and while Murray and I were like: “Yeah, we do directions for a living. I have Google maps on my Blackberry if we get lost. We also have the map of Ontario you gave us. And a GPS. We’ll figure it out,” my mom was fascinated by our final routing. I guess it’s like my obsessing about the weather, and actually wanting to talk about it (not only for small talk): just one of those things.

So, in closing: we took the 11 to the 169 (which becomes the 12), then onto the 7 just past (Brendan) Cannington, then down the 28 at Peterborough to the 401. And we stopped in Kingston to visit Lis and Bryan. And we drove straight to Jimmy and Dominique’s for their housewarming that night. It took us 7 hours.