Visiting My Parents, and Running the Visit Like a Tour Schedule

At ten to eleven, Dad set the teapot down on the table and said, "Stay for lunch, son."

I looked at my watch before I looked at him. The glance lasted one second, but he saw it. I know because he didn't say it again. He just poured more tea into my glass, fuller than it needed to be.

There was a backpack by my chair, and in the backpack a wireless microphone with two bars of battery left, forgotten since the trip I'd led the day before yesterday. In my head the schedule for the visit had been done since morning: arrive at eleven, sit for an hour, eat, help clear up, be at the bus station by two to make it back for tomorrow afternoon's group. It was the same timetable I tape to the coach door for every tour.

I have guided tours for eleven years, mostly short trips, a twenty-nine-seat coach, guests who are all strangers. Going home to see my parents is also a trip. The only difference is that there are two guests, and both of them knew my name before I could talk.

This is not about loving my parents too little, or being too busy and going home to tick a box. The answer to "do you love them" has been settled for a long time, and it was never where the trouble sat. The schedule isn't a bad thing either: thanks to it, thirty-odd people on a coach have never once been left behind at a rest stop. It is simply a tool that fits well in one place and badly in another, and I carried it into the house without noticing it was running.

Why am I still counting the time when I'm already in the yard?

The rest stop is where I'm most at home. "Twenty minutes, everyone, we leave at three-fifteen." Then I stand by the coach door with a little flag in my hand and count heads as people walk past. Eleven, twelve, thirteen. Whether the group is big or small, there is always something for me to do. Guiding a tour never has a moment of sitting with nothing to do.

The tea table at home is different. Dad sits at the head, Mom beside the dish cabinet, the TV muted since I walked in. Nobody needs counting, nobody needs to be shown a good spot for a photo. The first thirty seconds of silence arrive sooner than I'm used to, and I feel my hand going off to look for something to hold. It finds my watch.

"I'll eat early, Dad, I've got a bus at two."

"A bus at two, and it's only eleven?" Mom called from the kitchen, not sharp, just really asking.

"Yes, I'm leaving extra time to be safe."

At first I thought it was an occupational habit, like a chef who still glances at the kitchen when he eats out. But a habit of the job can't explain why I run a schedule only at my parents' house, and not with old friends. With friends I sit until late, and no bus matters.

The schedule is doing something else. It answers a question nobody has asked yet. Sitting across from two people waiting for me to speak, the question hanging in the room is: how long are you staying, and when will you be back. Whether my parents actually want to ask that, I don't know, because I never asked them. All I know is that with a timetable in hand I don't have to hear it. The answer is already taped to the coach door.

There was one more thing, and I only saw it last. I announce my departure three times: when I walk in, when I sit down to eat, when I get up. Last month the bowl of squash soup Mom carried out was still simmering, and she had to wrap it in a cloth to hold it. I asked why she'd cooked in such a rush. She said, "You've got a bus at two." I'd said that sentence once, like a weather report, and forgotten it. She remembered, and spent the whole morning cooking to my clock.

I sat and ate that soup, so hot I had to blow on every spoonful, and I couldn't say anything.

Fifteen minutes is just a workable size to try, and ten would do. Knowing you did it right doesn't depend on feeling relaxed. The sign is somewhere else: in those fifteen minutes, did Dad or Mom say something you hadn't predicted.

The first time I did it, fifteen minutes felt like a stretch of road stuck in traffic. I looked at the wall clock exactly three times, and each time the hand had hardly moved. At minute nine, Mom stopped wiping the table and asked whether I still led groups to the place with the glass bridge, because Mrs. Tư from up the lane had come back and told the whole story. I had never told Mom about that. It turned out she had been picking up news of my work from other people, and that question had been waiting on the doorstep for who knows how long.

Over the next visit or two, some people find their parents talk a lot more, and some find both sides stay just as awkward and nothing improves. Mine sat between the two: the second time, Dad only asked if I'd eaten. The third time, the question about the bridge finally came. On a day that's too busy, keep only the last step: say your departure time once, when you walk in. Even that is enough to stop Mom cooking by my clock.

Where I tripped myself up was reminding them of my departure the way I remind guests on the coach. On a tour, a heads-up is a kindness: "ten minutes until we board, everyone," and people thank you for not being left behind. I used the same voice at home and thought it was thoughtful. My parents heard a countdown. Better to do it a little differently: say it once, at the start, as a fact and not a reminder, and then let it go. If I still want to say it again, I ask myself who needs to hear it, Mom or me.

When the microphone is out of my hand, what do I say?

That afternoon Dad invited me for a walk around the hamlet. I went along with my hands in my pockets, but my mouth was already in its usual mode: is this concrete bridge new, Dad, those nipa palms look great, I should take a photo of the water spinach pond here. Dad walked slowly with his hands clasped behind his back, nodding at each sentence.

At the corner of the pond he stopped and said, "Back then, this place..."

"Yeah, the pond is really nice, the light at this hour is perfect for a shot." I said it straight on, without waiting for him to finish.

Dad held the rest of his sentence in his mouth, then walked on. I stood two more steps before I realized I'd just cut him off in the voice I use on passing strangers.

Here is what I don't know: what Dad was going to say after "back then." What the pond is called, who dug it, whether I swam there as a kid or was forbidden to go near. I have taken strangers through a dozen villages and I can tell a decent story about each one, but about the pond behind my own house I have none. All I have is an introduction.

The microphone is not just a plastic thing with a battery. Whoever holds it gets to set the rhythm: keep talking, fill the gaps, finish a sentence for someone else so the group doesn't squirm. Do that for eleven years and your hands know it without you. My parents speak slowly, pause mid-sentence, sometimes stop on a single word and wait. I hear that pause as a gap to be filled, when it may be the place where Dad is remembering.

Look a little closer and it isn't only a speaking habit. On a tour I'm the one who knows the most on the coach, because I've read ahead and driven that route enough times. Back in the village the one who knows the most is Dad. I'm used to being the one who knows, so the role of sitting and listening, asking again, letting people tell it in their own order, sits right beside an odd feeling: I become the person who knows least on the trip. I have to learn to be a guest in the very place where I grew up.

The person who taught me this was a woman on a trip to Đà Lạt three years ago, not my parents. She was the slowest in the group, and by the second day I'd gotten used to waiting for her at the start of every stop, flag raised, urging politely: "Ma'am, five minutes left." She stopped in the middle of the path and said quietly, just loud enough for me: "You keep standing there waiting, and I can't walk. Go ahead, I know the way to the coach." I blushed for the whole morning. I thought I was waiting for her. It turned out she saw me counting her.

That day I couldn't connect it to my parents. I only pieced it together much later, and it's still loose.

A question about an object is different from a question about a person. "When did you plant that jackfruit tree, Dad" is easier to answer than "what was your life like back then." Dad answers about the jackfruit, then wanders off into something else, because the jackfruit is only a door. What I took from repeating this a few times: don't try to get anywhere, just let Dad go.

The first time I tried, Dad walked faster than I expected and I had to work to keep up. He stopped at an iron gate that wasn't any house I knew, looked at it for a while, and walked on without a word. I held back from asking. Eighty minutes later, sitting at the tea table again, Dad mentioned it: that place used to be a field belonging to a landowner Dad worked for by the day, and he used to stand outside waiting to be paid. There was no gate back then. I sat listening with a glass in my hand, and I kept wondering why Dad chose to walk past that spot, and I still haven't asked. After a few weeks, some people find this walk becomes a habit, and some manage it once and slide back into the schedule; both are ordinary. If a day is too rushed, shrink it to five minutes: at the front gate, ask Dad one question about the nearest tree or the nearest power pole, and stand there to hear the whole answer before heading out to the coach.

There is a quieter slip that I only recently caught. I'd stopped cutting Dad off, but then I did something else that also came from the job: I booked my parents a tour. I reserved a room at a seaside resort, drove the two of them out for two days, and even taped a schedule inside the van. They went, smiled, took photos. At the end Mom said "it was lovely, son," and Dad said "you planned it so carefully." Both sentences were true, and both are what people say to a tour guide.

A small walk through the hamlet, fifteen minutes at the tea table, sometimes tells me more than a two-day trip. I haven't given up taking my parents out, because it is still a gift. I've just stopped treating it as a replacement for sitting with them. If I want to lead, I lead once, and then I leave a morning for Dad to choose where to go.

If I try and it still feels forced

One afternoon I sat at the tea table for exactly fifteen minutes, phone in my pocket, and Dad dozed off in his chair for ten of them. Mom hadn't come back from the market. I sat alone looking at the tea going cold and thought: so the exercise failed.

It didn't. That day Dad simply had his own rhythm, and it had no room for me in it. My parents have a schedule of their own, not only me: when Dad naps, when Mom goes to the market, when the TV is on. If I arrive at the wrong spot in that schedule, even sitting correctly will feel forced. The way forward is to ask first: what time of day are you least busy, and then to move the sitting-together into that hour. Otherwise sit beside Mom and pick greens, with both hands busy, and talk will come more naturally than making two people stare at each other.

The next day I tried exactly that. Mom handed me a small basket, half full of water spinach not yet snapped. The two of us sat on the kitchen step, and the sound of snapping stems was clearer than any voice. After a long while Mom said, eyes still on the greens: "You're always going away. I've gotten used to it." I started to answer "I miss home too" to round off the sentence, then didn't, and snapped another stem. Mom said nothing more. Not one of those lines fixed anything, but I remember it better than everything I've ever said at the tea table.

The second reason is harder to say. Some people run a schedule on visits home not out of habit, but because there's something at home that is hard to sit with for long: being yelled at, having every action picked apart, being made to hear things that shrink you, and it happens over and over, not once. If that's you, this piece isn't telling you to sit another fifteen minutes. Being insulted or controlled again and again is not something to practice patience with, and your timetable then is how you keep yourself safe, not a quirk. Tell someone you trust, or someone with professional training, about it. And if there are moments when you think about hurting yourself, please go to Emergency Support.

And if the exercise just isn't for you, that's fine too. Why I keep wanting to correct my parents is about another habit that also follows me from work into the house, and it may help you notice what you tend to carry through the door.

Last Sunday I left the microphone behind in the city. At eleven, Dad set the teapot down on the table. I didn't look at my watch, and Dad poured my tea exactly half a glass.