february and my parents

15 Mar 2011 7 Comments

by oliviamwhelan in Uncategorized

this should have been published about a month ago, in time for my parents’ anniversary, February 15th.

regardless, here is my love letter to mom + dad.

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unrelenting New York cold. the ground is stiff with unrelenting New York cold.  we’re all dying for Spring.

walking to work, I can’t help but think about Amsterdam; the place I went with my Dad just under a month ago.  it’s the skies that do it – the gray morning reminds me of the always overcast weather in Amsterdam. well, it may not always be overcast in Amsterdam, but it was always overcast for the five days i was there.

and it’s always overcast in the paintings.  Oil paintings of frozen canals and poor people, bundled up and walking on ice.  Dad and I looked at these paintings before our flight back to NY.  He treated me to one more lunch before boarding – we ate at a restaurant that catered to my pesky ova-pescatarian diet, which Dad never seems to get fed up with.  (“you’re sure you can eat here, Kiddo?”).

“what did i do to deserve my parents’ support”  is a thought I grapple with sometimes.

not just one kind of support.  the monetary kind when i really need money.  audience members for an audience-less improv show.  exuberance for my web videos where I swear and say vulgar things and make out with boys.  occasional trips to Europe.

knowing you’re worthy of love and deserving of support is one thing I’m not going to spend to much time on here.    thankfully, I’ve put away a lot of that guilt that sometimes comes with being supported.  (Irish guilt?  Catholic guilt?  Workaholic guilt?)

so now I’m just trying to understand my parents and their unrelenting love – it’s like a perpetual motion machine that doesn’t slow down (no, I wasn’t a science major.  yes, i am reading “improvise” and am on the “2nd Law of Thermodynamics” chapter.)  Even when I told my parents that I wanted to major in Art History as my “back-up plan”  (note – an Art History degree is about as reliable as a Theatre one), they kept supporting.

The mommies in the Dutch paintings are usually stout peasant women either hauling a barrel of potatoes or holding the hand of a child.  hard at work or tenderly nurturing.  My mom is like a hott Dutch mommy.  Every Friday for 9 years, my waiffish, once-a-model mother lugged my ice-skates around the city in order to get me to my figure skating lessons in Chelsea Piers.  When I was a junior in college, she ran to the Metropolitan Museum to fact-check on a miniature grandfather clock i had to write an essay on (the essay was due in an hour from the time I called her).   so many times I’ve come to my mom crying over something I thought I wasn’t allowed to cry about anymore.  and on more than one occasion, she’s helped me maintain confidence in myself as an artist:  when I told Mom I wanted to get into Art Restoration, she raised an eyebrow and said, “Osey, is that really what you want to do?”

brace yourself, this is sentimental, but love is the only perpetual motion machine.  it’s not perfect, but it’s perpetual.  my parents love perpetually.

New York February is a month of cold.  Amsterdam February is as well.    Hallmark insists the world should warm up in this month and go bananas about love.   I’m going to side with Hallmark.

February 14th is Valentine’s day.  February 15th is my parents’ anniversary.  it’s very cold and Spring is far away, but for me, this is a month of love.

Happy Anniversary, Mom + Dad -

Thank you for your unrelenting, perpetual love.

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