Visiting Parents

I haven't visited my parents in Kolkata often enough and definitely never stayed long enough. Every time I've been there I was glad to have checked the obligation off my list and get back home. This essay is very relatable to me:

.. our relationship to our parents’ homes is a complicating factor. Going back to our childhood homes as adults is inevitably a collision. This collision is kind of fun for some of us: We get to alienate our partners by regressing a bit while enjoying the indulgence and shared eccentricities of our families. Others experience this collision as disorienting and lonely. Was I ever really at home here? Do these people know me at all? Would they rather we just FaceTimed instead? There are very often new people living with our aging parents, people we sometimes don’t know very well. Even as adult children, it can feel odd to spend time with our parents in houses that can’t accommodate us anymore. It can be tempting to feel sorry for ourselves, as if something that was promised us is being withheld.

In my case, the place I am going to is not my childhood home. My parents bought this house many years after I had left home. I was already a mother by then. Maybe it is better this way but not by much. I do get the sense, my parents are satisfied with the video calls that happen often enough and like their own space to be as they have grown used to being. My presence produces a disruption in their flow that is harder and harder for them to deal with as they grow older.