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Parents do get on one's nerves sometimes. Certainly I look forward to seeing them after some months of separation, but there is a tendency for me to be viewed as a small child rather than an adult. Ok, I speak here of my father. My mom is ok, I guess, and not as overbearing as my dad.

I am a little confused by this characteristic of my relationship with my father. It seems reasonable to expect that his relationship with his parents would provide a model for his relationship with him, but that does not seem to be the case. My father has a position of strength in his relationship with his parents. He is quite independent from them, and pretty much holds his own counsel. Arguments rarely occur, since he always wins, or at least he always does what he wants to. He was given relative autonomy by his parents, and struck out on his own, forging a career and life path that might be approved of, but definitely not laid out by his parents.

In sharp contrast, he feels the need to tell me exactly what to do in every situation. I do not exaggerate. Just today, he has told me three times to sort out my clothes for dry-cleaning. I tell him a particular coat was cleaned just before I left Chicago, he refuses to believe me. Then he gets annoyed when I refuse to place that coat in the pile to be cleaned. See, I'm actually saving him the cost of cleaning a coat unnecessarily.

Another great example is packing. When I was packing to leave Chicago, a certain quantity had been put together before my parents arrived. Then they showed up, and proceeded to remove everything and repack it. Then he informed me that there was no way that I could have packed everything myself. I must say that I most certainly could have, and would have done so on a schedule that was convenient to myself, and not him. When my coats, worth a pretty penny, were being crushed into a piece of luggage that I saw no need to fill to bursting, I protested, pointing out that packing a cashmere coat into a bag so tightly that a full-grown man has to step on the bag into to close it might not be such a good idea. He proceeded to declare that the bag could still fit more stuff, and did so. I wonder if my coats will still fit when I get them back under my control. In the same period of time, four days before I was to leave Chicago, all my clothes were packed into various bags, without my supervision. The result was a shower delayed by an hour while I hunted through bags and boxes to piece together an outfit. Is it too much to ask that I be allowed to know where my socks are to be found?

Here's the thing. It is not as if my choices or behaviour is particularly offensive, but that they are not exactly the same as his. I am a very different person to him. If nothing else, I have a more broadly defined purpose to my life. I do not wish to lead a good life, for I have no idea what that means. He has a conception of what a good person should do. That includes a whole set of behaviours that I see no need to outline here. I find many of these to be irrelevant to myself. I am messy because I barely notice the mess. Since I do not even notice, why expend energy to fold clothes? Whatever can be placed on hangers is. Things like t-shirts worn to bed, I see no point at all in avoiding wrinkles on them. Honestly, I am not bothered by the dry air in Chicago. It just doesn't bother me. In fact, I find that humidifiers create an overly humid and stifling environment.

Ok, this is devolving into a list of grievances. I'll stop now.