Parents

Last weekend, I visited my parents in San Francisco.

I get out there once a year on business, and I take the opportunity to see them while I am at it. It's a good deal.

This year, the first time I visited as a knitter, I discovered to my chagrin that I cannot knit while my father is talking.

Now, I am an obsessive enough knitter that I have knit wile conversing with many people, even with people who require more reciprocal interaction from me than my father, and I have done so without mistakes. Granted, I was working on my mittens, a relatively complicated two-color project, but I had completed the entire first mitten prior to the visit, without trouble. On the second mitten, with my dad talking, I made a mistake in the very first row. And the second row. And the fourth row. There is a mistake in the seventh row that I didn't catch and will have to fix with duplicate stitching. It is...magic.

That's the thing about parents. I can't remember who said it, but it's the truth: they know how to push your buttons because they installed them. I love my father, and for the most part his conversation (which begins the moment I set foot in the door and continues nonstop until the moment I leave, with little to no input from me) is simply an expression of his concern and love for me. I get that. In my old age it doesn't even bother me as much it used to.

Or does it? I thought I was doing fine, but there's that knitting, making a liar of me....