Balance Points

I know how this works. It's a function of a memory for more extensive than the decades this particular concatenation of atoms can account for. And it's still knocking me tail over teakettle.

It seemed like everyone I went to college with got married at the same time. I lost count of the weddings I went to, over the space of a couple of years. Then, for the most part, those who chose to all started having children at the same time. That was a bit more variable - some of us were in grad school, some of us had problems with the process, some of us decided on it later than others - but it was still within a discernible time frame.

Now it seems as if suddenly everyone's parents are becoming frail, becoming ill, requiring constant intimate care - and dying. Every single person at closing on my mom's house had a parent living with them because they could no longer live alone. That included me, the buyers, the closing agent and the real estate attorney who helped me. Both my in-laws left this earth this past spring; my son ended up withdrawing from spring term at college because of it. And I've quite literally lost count of how many of my friends have lost at least one parent, and often both, in the past two years. Now I'm taking my mom to see her college roommate, who lives about an hour and a half east of us. Chances are good it will be the last time they'll see each other. Mom's friend's daughter is a friend of mine; she's the one I'm trying to support.

If it's something in the water, does anyone have a unicorn I could borrow? I need the horn, but I don't want to detach it from the original owner.