Why I’m Here.

As an avid and diligent blogger, it’s in my nature to blog about everything and anything that is meaningful or moving to me.  Unfortunately, one of the things that needs to be written about for my own mental health is off-limits on my very public blog.  This is because the subject I speak of happens to be my aging parents.  The aforementioned parents read my blog regularly. 

I was born in 1971.  At the time, my dad was 47 and my mom was 34.  Apparently the birth control malfunctioned, and my little life begun.

I currently live about 20 miles away from my parents.  They’ve lived near me for the past 5 years.  It’s been a beautiful mixture of happiness and bitterness, anxiety and joy, deep love and deep anguish.  They have been able to be an active part of my children’s lives, but over the past few years, my dad has really gone downhill. 

So that’s why I’m here.  I know that what I’m going through isn’t all that unusual, but I don’t have many people in my life going through this.  And most people don’t write about it – because that would hurt the feelings of the subjects they are writing about. 

The title of my blog reflects a comment I made to my mom a year or so ago.  I told her that when my dad first started going downhill, he was 80% Ron and 20% someone I didn’t know.  These days, the 80% is a stranger – and 20% still remains of that wickedly funny, impossibly positive person that raised me.  This blog will be a place for me to explore the journey I’m on with my parents, where the child has become the authority figure, and the many things I’m learning along the way.