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Lydia looked terrific, as usual. My baby sister was the opposite of me in personality and looks. While I inherited the brunette hair from my mother, Lydia snatched the blonde hair genes from Dad, though he had nothing to show off anymore with it being cut short and all gray now. Lydia also grabbed Dad’s striking blue eyes and beaming smile. She was also about four inches shorter than me, which was something I’d always envied. I wasn’t insecure about my height, but it would’ve been nice to wear heels and not tower over everyone like Shaquille O’Neal.
“So, your dad passed up an offer from Texas A&M last week,” Mom said as if turning down a coaching job from a major university was no big deal.
“Why?” Lydia and I asked in unison.
Mom smiled and looked at my dad adoringly. Even after all these years, she was still hot for the old man. It was pretty cute.
“You girls know exactly why,” Dad answered.
“Because you’re retiring altogether?” Lydia teased.
“Daddy will retire the day his soul leaves his body. We all know that,” Mom teased.
It drove me up the wall when my mom referred to our dad as Daddy, as if we were still three years old, but old habits die hard, and that Southern Belle wasn’t about to change her ways.
“You know Collierville will always be our home. Your mother and I aren’t chasing fairytales with big coaching possibilities when we’re already perfectly content in the fairytale life we’re living now.”
“You guys both do the empty nest thing very well,” I said, pushing the last of the dessert I couldn’t finish toward my sister. She could eat that and everyone else’s and not gain a pound doing so, either.
“Well, I can’t say we do it that well,” Mom said. “We miss you girls terribly.”
“Sometimes your mom goes into your rooms and sings to the walls, praying that one day her girls will?—”
“Oh, please,” Lydia interrupted. “Dad, you honestly need to come up with something new. That old chime ain’t working on us anymore.”
“No?” my dad chuckled. “Well, at least get yourselves some boyfriends or get married so your mom has some grandchildren to visit.”
Both Lydia and I laughed that one off. Dad was trying to make a joke, but he must’ve forgotten that I was trying to get married a few months ago before my plans fell apart.
“Tim,” my mother scolded Dad, her eyes darting between him and me. “Easy on the jokes, honey. They could seem insensitive if you’re not careful.”
Dad’s eyes went straight to me, wide and showing some pity, and then his expression changed. “You know what, peaches?” he said, using the nickname he gave me when I was a little girl, “I’m glad it didn’t work out between you and Jesse.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said, my humored expression showing I was happy to hear him say that. “How so?”
“I didn’t like how he treated you. It always seemed to be about him.”
“It was,” I answered. “I think that’s why it fell apart. Once I stopped focusing on him and started putting a lot of effort into my career, the fights started happening, and we both became miserable.”
“Relationships should be work but not a chore,” my mother responded.
“Aren’t those two the same thing?” Dad said. My mom always came in with these one-liners that made us all pause and wonder what she was talking about.
“No.” She looked at me and Lydia, “Work is something you get paid to do.” She looked at my dad, “Chores are things that you do because you have to, and the only benefit you receive is that things are maintained.”
“Sounds like the same thing, Alice,” Dad said.
“Well, they aren’t,” she answered. “I know you think our relationship has survived forty-nine years because you do your chores, but honey, you’re greatly rewarded for them, and you know it,” she teased him.
“Easy, sunshine,” he played back, then looked at me. “You’re gonna give the girls ideas about what’s happening in that fancy hotel room tonight.”
“Good Lord, Dad,” I said with a shocked laugh. “No one wants any of those ideas.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Lydia said, shaking her head. “I think that’s enough analogies, Mom.”
“No kidding,” I said as my parents eyed each other playfully and laughed. “Let’s change the subject, shall we? Dad getting lucky tonight is a road I’m not staying on.”
“Okay, then,” my mother said, smiling. “Who wants to go first and brag a little bit about their lives these days since you both don’t want to hear Daddy and me bragging about our happiness,” she said with a sly smile.
