AARP Hearing Center
Every walk with your parents can unlock a highlight reel you never knew existed.
Michelle Kondrich
When you’re in your 20s and 30s, you think you know everything about your parents. But you also think jalapeño poppers count as a vegetable.
You assume you’ve heard all their good stories — how they met, the dumb jobs they had before you were born, the time they almost bought a timeshare in Boca before realizing they hated Boca. You probably think the rest is just boring filler.
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And then one day when you’re in your 50s, your mom drops a story that makes you realize you’ve been sitting on a treasure chest of bizarre family history without even knowing it.
It happened to me recently. I was walking with my mom, who’s now 84 and, wonderfully, more active than ever. (Seriously, I haven’t personally witnessed her sit down since at least 1978.) She’ll walk 10 miles, eat a strawberry and a fistful of granola and suddenly decide to clean the garage.
The author’s mom, proving that every epic tale begins with a bedtime story.
Courtesy Eric Spitznagel
Anyway, during our walk, she remembered a story that I swear I’d never heard in my life. I’m not even sure how it came up. We were talking about pets, and I casually mentioned that I didn’t know much about the animals she and my dad lived with before my brother and I came along. That was enough to get her talking.
Long before I was born, my parents had a cat, the first and only animal they ever let sleep in their bed. This cat had fractured its leg and had to wear a cast, which sounds adorable until you imagine a night’s sleep with a small, furry Louisville Slugger windmilling between you. My mom said the cat would swing its cast around at night like it was doing a drunk helicopter impression, repeatedly smacking her and my dad in the face.
One morning, it whacked my mom so hard that the cast came flying off its little kitty arm and landed on her chest. She woke up to find a sweaty blob of plaster staring up at her, like the embryonic xenomorph that burst out of John Hurt’s chest in Alien.
She screamed. My dad screamed. The cat probably screamed.
I’m in my 50s, my mom is in her 80s, and somehow I’d never heard this beautifully surreal and ridiculous story about my parents. It was enough to make me wonder: What else am I missing? Do I really know everything worth knowing about them? Or should I be asking more questions?
The Dad stories I missed
My dad died 25 years ago. A quarter century. That’s enough time for a brand-new adult to be born, graduate college and have student loans already in collections.
It feels like it happened both yesterday and in another lifetime. It was a different version of me that had a father. I was a spoiled jerk who didn’t know how good he had it.
The author’s mom, casually wearing a parrot as a hat for some reason. That's another story she hasn’t told yet.
Courtesy Eric Spitznagel
My biggest fear is that my dad will fade from my memory, his voice and face blurring a little more each year. And for the most part, that’s true, I’m sorry to report. But every so often, my dad shows up in unexpected ways.
Earlier this summer, during another woods hike with my mom (in which I was barely able to keep up), she told a story about him that was entirely unfamiliar to me. “When he worried about you, your dad used to say, ‘I’ll put a bubble around him,’” she told me. “I remember him saying that when you headed off to kindergarten, and when we dropped you off at college, and at the airport, when we saw you off to England alone.”
I had no memory of this. Apparently it was something he only said to her — his own private superstition about keeping me safe.
Now that I have a kid of my own, I get it. My son, Charlie, is 14, and the idea of him going off into the world without me gives me heart palpitations. You can’t escape that anxious feeling that you’re never able to completely protect the ones you love. But now, thanks to my dad, I have the language for that anxiety. When the day comes for Charlie to leave for college, I’m going to lean over to my wife and say, “I’ll put a bubble around him.”
It’s like saying the Lord’s Prayer. I don’t know if saying it out loud actually makes a difference. But wow, does it feel comforting. It’s the illusion of control.
And it’s all because of a story about my dad that took me half a century to hear for the first time.
Ask now, regret never
When it comes to our parents, we’re all in denial. We see them getting older but we think there’ll always be more time. And there is, until suddenly there isn’t. We wait too long to ask. My dad’s bubble story sat untold for decades. The cat-cast saga might’ve died with my mom if I hadn’t pressed her to share something from her past.
The author and his mom, making new memories while unpacking the old ones.
Courtesy Eric Spitznagel
Parents don’t hold back these stories because they’re guarding state secrets. They just don’t think to tell them unless something jogs their memory. Which means if you want the good stuff — the insane, human, ridiculous stuff — you have to go looking for it.
So here’s my advice: Start asking now. Ask about their first car, their worst boss, the dumbest fight they had before they got married. Ask about the time they accidentally ended up naked in a public place (there’s always one). Ask them to tell you a story they’ve never told anyone.
Because one day you’ll want those details. You’ll want the private jokes, the crazy rituals and the tales of sweaty cat casts. You’ll kick yourself if you don’t get them.
If they dodge the question, let them. Then come back tomorrow and try again. And again. Eventually they’ll break. It’s better than the alternative: wishing you could trade every stupid argument you ever had with your parents for one more silly, pointless story about a three-legged cat.
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