Nobody every tells me anything

First off: Do not be alarmed. Everything is fine. This is post hoc blogging. I repeat, everything is fine. Or will be.

Anyway. My Mom calls me. She has that tone in her voice. Something is up. As in something like bad. Not something like "We won a car!" My Mom goes to zero on the phone when something is wrong. Quiet. Uber calm. No fluff. It's just straight on. So, Dad is in the hospital. It was planned. He didn't want anyone to know. He's not doing quite as well as they wanted.

Okay.

It's something he needed taken care of for awhile. But, being a man, he put it off to the last possible minute. And he was having more bleeding than he should. And his blood pressure was in the crapper. They had told my parents that he would be in for one to five days. It was looking like it might be five.

My folks do this to me and my sibs all the time. My great-grandfather was dead for almost 6 months before I found out. For years, I thought I had a vision conversion problem as a child. Turns out it was really my brother who had the problem. They just made me do the exercises so he would too. I didn't find that out until last year. I keep expecting some day that I'm going to say, "Geez, my lower back itches." And my Mom will say, "Oh, that's just where they removed your tail when you were a baby. The doctors took care of it. You never knew. It was fine."

Seriously, I don't think we're rich enough to be considered WASPs. But in the denial/repression department, we've got a very WASPy thing going on. It's like the longer they can get away without telling me stuff the easier it will be when I find out. It's not like they lie, per se. They just kind of delay notification. And for some of it, I don't know, maybe they're right. I just get this really bizarre sense of "Whoa. Shit. What the hell?" And I don't think I'm terrible to tell bad news too. I try not to fall apart, be strong, handle myself. But for some reason, this was a pattern they started long ago, and haven't felt it necessary to change even though I'm an adult. Or so I hear.

Anyway, Dad's doing much better. He's lucid. His blood pressure's going back to normal. And, as requested, I will save my visit until he's back home. Unless they've got a full house since the older brother who was stolen by the Gypsys and is now Prime Minister of Canada has decided to drop in for a visit.