Pat and Norma

My parents are homeless.

On January 31st, they sold their home of twenty-nine years, a two-family semi-attached brick house in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. After raising three daughters, as well as playing surrogate parents to what seemed like an endless stream of “relatives” (in the Philippines, everyone is considered a cousin or an auntie), my mom and dad were ready to downsize to a comfy two-bedroom condo in a “fifty-five and older” community in New Jersey. The only problem was that the completion of the condo was delayed until the end of February. Or the beginning of March. In fact, the completion date is constantly being pushed back. After several failed attempts to postpone the closing date of their house, Pat and Norma decided to put their belongings in storage, go forward with the closing as scheduled, and become guests in their children’s homes until their condo is ready. 

They spent their first week of their homelessness at my house. My husband was away on business that week, and I thought that having my parents in my home would be easier if he wasn’t around. That way, I wouldn’t have to worry about any tension between the three of them.

A few days before my parents’ arrival, I set up the spare bedroom for their weeklong stay. My kids had been using the spare bedroom as their playroom, and my son was very annoyed that his train table was being pushed to the wall to make room for the daybed we purchased for my parents’ use. I fretted over whether or not I should keep the train table in the spare room at all, but the only other option was moving it into my son’s bedroom. This would mean giving the boy access to his trains 24/7, and since he’s not yet four years old, he does not possess the self-control to stop playing for food or bathroom breaks or sleep. So I kept the train table in the spare bedroom. I did move many of his other toys to the sunroom, located adjacent to the dining room on the first floor. But my daughter had been using the sunroom as her arts-n-crafts room, and now it was jam-packed with my son’s toys. Suffice to say, my daughter was not happy with this decision. So both my son and daughter began griping about my parents’ imminent visit, and I began to worry.