Home Sweet Home

Yesterday I returned to my homeland. A land not so far away in mileage but the distance between their society and the one I live in now is huge. It's a place where almost everything closes on Sunday. A place where there's one grocery store, one red light, and one doctor. Part of me loves going back. It's a comforting feeling. A familiar feeling. The rest of me, the part of me not drowning in nostalgia, screams to leave the moment we arrive. I walk into my mother's house, put my luggage in the spare bedroom filled with my sister's and my stuffed animals, and hang out my "The Doctor Is In Shingle". My family has never understood that I am not a doctor. I am a Clinical Laboratory Scientist and that ain't the same. They don't care. From the moment my grandmother finds out that I'm at my mother's she starts calling me with every ache and pain. My mother has medical records for her and my step dad that she has saved since my last visit. I must review them and interpret every result, reference range, and notation for the both of them. My aunt calls with her epic saga of "female problems". Everything from yeast infections to constipation, nothing is too embarrassing for her to share with me...In vivid, colorful, nauseating detail.

My mother fills her house with refined sugar sweets, chocolate milk, and caffeinated beverages just for my children. I spend my time, in between seeing patients, prying my children off the ceiling. A good portion of my time is also spent giving my children "the eye". Any mother will know what I am talking about. It's the look you give your children when you want them to stop whatever they're doing but you don't want everyone to hear you say it. I got the chance to give "the eye" many times over this Thanksgiving. My son, who is famous in my family for his comments, got "the eye" many times. He told my mother that her pajamas matched her bed sheets. They were both the same "flower looking" design. On another occasion, he told my mother that her hair "looks like the hair style that the mother from 'That 70's Show' wears". I was so proud....

Well, just a few notes to let everyone know that their families are not as strange as they think. After all, you could have my family!