Day 21

Pegi keeps asking me, "Who is the monster in my closet?" The monster is my fear. In my case, it is the fear of disappointing my parents. What is so funny about this whole sad scenario is that unless I turned into a crazed drug-addict prostitute serial killer, I wonder if I could truly disappoint my parents.

I move through life, afraid of not living up to my parent's expectations, yet they never set any expectations for me to live up to! If I got a C in school, I got the same reaction as when I got an A. I graduated from high school a year early. My parents never asked me what I wanted to do. They allowed me to sit around for seven months. I house sat for them while they went to Alaska. I did nothing but read a bunch of books. I didn't have a car so I was pretty much stuck.

My parents expected nothing, or so I thought. My older brother returned from overseas while our parents were gone. I remember making a huge spaghetti dinner and stopping up the kitchen sink. Don't put onion peels down the garbage disposal. We couldn't wash dishes until the plumber came out. My folks came home a week early to a dirty kitchen – with every pot and pan, every dish and fork, unwashed. My Dad unclogged the sink, they left the house for two hours, and I put everything to rights. Now THAT disappointed them. Two days later, I got a job and moved out.

Funny how my parents probably don't remember when they hosted the main course in a progressive dinner for about twenty people. They left the kitchen, formal dining room, and family room a mess. I think I was 15 or 16 year old at the time. Anyway, I cleaned up everything—every piece of china, crystal, and silver was carefully hand washed and dried and put in its storage container. The linens were put in the dry cleaner's basket, pots and pans were cleaned, as was the stove, sink, and counters. The extra chairs were returned to the storage closet. The house was perfect. I remember how thrilled my parents were.

Over the decades, I have tried so hard to make them feel that proud of me again, but if they do, they never show it. At least not like that! I'm now starting to realize that I need to be proud of ME and not worry about my parent's reaction. They probably won't have one anyway!