It recently dawned on me that I am not a kid anymore. Bluntly put, I’m rather old, and have been around a while. With minimal deductive logic, I realised this meant my parents have been together for an even longer time. November 11th? 21st? (something like that — a date I should know, but don’t) last year was special for my parents, considering they’d officially put up with each other for 25 years and all.
I figured they needed some sort of upto-now lifetime achievement award. In my small way, I mean.
So, a while earlier (last January to be exact), I started writing them this letter. It was just me articulating how much they meant to me, and my plans relating to a small token of appreciation I’d prepared marking the occasion. Yes, I wrote — as in using a pencil and paper. As I’d planned, I finished it before I travelled home-home for the summer and gave it to them in person when I was in Madras (June-July, or something).
The plan outlined, as a 25th anniversary gift, shipping them off to any part of the world of their choice, for as long as they wanted to be there and me footing all expenses.
Needless to say, when I first gave the letter to them proposing the idea, they were all “No way!”, and then that became “We’re so proud (tear, tear), but we can’t take this from you”, which later morphed to “OK, we have these tiny plans” (to do what I don’t remember, except they were tiny), and so on … . Of course, I reject all minor plans holding out for them to crack and come up with something better, after battling all the initial guilt.
By now it’s almost November, the anniversary is looming sometime thereabout and nothing’s happened, so I get a bit impatient. I mean, they’ve seen different places and lived in different places, and it was hard for me to get a handle on what new experience it is they were really interested in having. After some pushing, it’s made clear to me that they’d always wanted to take a cruise down the Nile.
Cool, OK, so Egypt it is. Tataaa. (I can be impatient, yes.)
But then there were a ton of life things… like working people can’t just arbitrarily pack up and leave because their son thinks it’s a good idea, so things were delayed for another couple of months.
So, finally, in a couple of days, my parents are being shipped off to some region of Egypt, and have a ton of plans as to what it is they plan to see and do (snorkeling?) there, for a week and a half or so. They then continue on to other places to meet old friends (something I wouldn’t do, but amn’t complaining that they are) for a while. Oh, and the thing at some point includes 4-5 days on a cruise down the Nile. What they wanted.
Now they’re all in tears all proudlike and I guess, love me.
This, ladies and gents, is how one buys love.
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