Spring forward and outta here
(Apologies for the rambling and incoherent style of the following)

Both parents left today, a gorgeous New England spring day with a touch of breeziness and azure skies above.

It was an interesting trip. The parents got along fine. It was the first time in years I have spent time with them together. I think my mother still loves my father. I'm not sure my father loves anyone. But he does have a sense of duty towards people, including me and my mother.

She was at first somewhat difficult, making incendiary comments about various relatives and in-laws, being her bitter-in-the-disguise-of-caustically-realistic self. But after two days of touring around Crimson City and having a good time at museums and shoe stores and the like, she seemed almost jolly. I think she enjoyed herself.

He was as he always is. Effortlessly likeable, steady, uncomplaining, and with yet another surefire business plan in the works. He was already at baggage claim when my mother and I got to the airport, and she spotted him standing with his back to us. I sneaked up to him and said his Korean name in his ear, upon which he turned around in surprise, gave me a hug, and after a half second, gave my mother a hug too.

Mom and I went around Crimson Law School on Wednesday night -- I showed her the library, which she liked, and the enormous classrooms for 200, for her to get a sense of what I do during the week. On Thursday, the day after she arrived, we went downtown and looked at some historic sites, ate in the Italian district, went to DSW. On Friday, we had brunch in the school dining hall, where I saw Not-Gay Boyfriend, looking very cute in baseball cap and t-shirt, but looking very questionable on the not-gay issue in his red velvet casual loafers. We went to a museum afterwards, which Mom enjoyed, and strolled through the fancy part of town, before going to pick Dad up.

After picking him up at the airport, we rented a car and drove to Crimson City Zen Center, where he stayed. (He got up at 5 am both mornings he was here to chant and meditate.) Then we went around looking for a (what else?) Korean restaurant, but nothing was open, so we ate dinner at a Japanese restaurant instead. We also downed 3 small bottles of sake. The family that drinks together stays together! (Or some such shit like that.)

On Saturday, Dad picked me and Mom up and we went out for dim sum in Chinatown, after which we drove to Providence (actually, Cumberland) to check out the Zen Center there. After that, we drove to Brown University campus, to frolic along memory lane, I guess -- the last time my parents were in Providence together, it was on a pre-12th grade string of college visits.

The area around Brown was littered with tattooed, eyelined, and pierced youths smoking on the street -- not quite what I remember from my college visit, but that was 14 years ago. Dad seemed amenable to eating there somewhere, but I wasn't, so we got back in the car and eventually wound up in a menacing part of town, where we finally found a cop to direct us to Federal Hill, where we expected to find restaurants and shops. But the hill turned out to be disappointing, and it was raining, so we gave up and came back to Crimson City, where we ended up at (what else?) a Korean restaurant.

This Korean restaurant, however, did not serve liquor. I offered to get the two bottles of Korean moonshine that bigbro and J1 had mailed me for my birthday, and after a few offers, Dad handed over the keys to the car. Driving down the street to my dorm in the rented red Pontiac G6, I had to laugh: I was going to get booze from my house so I can drink with my supposedly estranged and separated parents, whom I haven't seen together in -- god, seven years? eight? I stuffed the bottles of soju and wine, and the two shotglasses that were included in the birthday pack into a blue Westlaw bag and headed back, capturing a perfect parking spot in front of the building. When I got back to the restaurant, I made the young waitress take a picture of the moment. It was (and is) supremely weird. Soju -- bringing people together for centuries!

Today was the last day of the parental visits. Dad came by around 8:30 in the morning, and we headed out to the airport, where we had breakfast. Coming back from the bathroom at one point, I saw them talking to each other over the table, just as if ... as if things were normal? As if they hadn't had a huge fight two years ago where my father refused to let my mother stay in the apartment if she didn't apologize (for what, it is unclear) to his mother? As if they had a marriage? As if we were a family? Man, it was weird. I process emotions slowly, and I kind of teared up just now, writing that. At the time, it just seemed unreal.

Mom left to go through security at around 11:20. I hugged her. She told me to eat regularly. She hugged Dad. It seemed friendly and sad at the same time. I insisted that Dad and I stay until she passed through detector and got all her stuff together, and she turned back and smiled and waved. We watched until we couldn't see her red coat anymore.

On the way back to the dorm, Dad suggested, "Let's see how much we can save to buy a condo for your mom." I was pretty pleased by that, even if his infallible business plans always go awry. We figured out his travel arrangements to Providence, where he is meeting a business partner, and then he left too, waving goodbye from the front of the red Pontiac G6 as he drove away.

So the parents are gone, and I've been hiding out in my room, reading Harry Potter and eating junk food for the past four hours, trying to digest the past few days. The last day I did any school work was Wednesday morning (and only an hour or two then), and I've got to write a prospectus for my history paper tonight, as well as read 45 pages of con law. But I've got my running clothes on, and there's a good 2 more hours of daylight left, and it's not the most important thing in the world, is it? School, I mean. It's going to be an incredibly stressful month, in which a whole lotta shit needs to get done, but I think a good thing happened this week, and though I'm not sure yet if it'll stay good in the minds and memories of the visitors and hosts, it was less stressful and more happy than I feared it would be. It was nice to feel like a family, as unreal as it was.