A Parent and a Kid

Today the Pens welcome Veronica Wolff, who is generous to be giving away a copy of her newest book, Devil's Highlander, to one lucky commenter!

I confess, when the fine Fatales asked if I’d blog and mentioned Parents as a potential topic, I made a little perplexed frowny face. I could opine at length on, oh, food, TV, sex, men. But parents? What have I got to say about parents?

But then I started thinking, just a little, and realized just how much I actually have been thinking about the topic.

For starters, there’s the whole concept behind my latest book: my Clan MacAlpin series follows a family of orphans (what else?!) in seventeenth century post-war Scotland. (Like how I got that bit of publicity out? Clever, huh?) I won’t explore why I chose to take the poor kids’ parents out of the equation—Adrienne already covered the cruel whimsy of authors yesterday, so ‘nuff said there.

But you could argue it’s impossible to think about life—fictional or otherwise—without contemplating parents. It always, eventually, comes up. Whether you’ve lost your parents, are a parent yourself, are estranged from a parent, or, like me, are lucky enough to still have both of them around.

It’s been a very explicit topic for me these past few weeks. I mean, consider my current summertime location. Though I live in San Francisco, the kids and I are on an extended visit…to my parents.

Boom…there’s a minefield of topics right there. Coming home again. When kids become parents. And the dreaded Becoming our parents. Gack.

And seriously. My perplexed frowny face? The lady doth protest too much. Because I am a parent, and honestly, even though my oldest was born nine years ago, it still sometimes wigs me out a bit. I worry I might never get used to the concept that I’m the one in charge. That I’m the one establishing boundaries, and setting examples, and answering questions about God and boys and moral fiber and stuff.

But for now it’s nice to be “home.” Like, at my parents’ home. The home where I can find high school paraphernalia rolling around in old dresser drawers. Where, if I wanted, I could wear jammies all day, because I don’t know the neighbors, or have a carpool to drive, or a dog to walk.

Where, for just a few weeks, I can foist all the hard calls onto someone else. Like, sure we can watch TV till late…we’re at Grandma’s, and it’s her call. Or, we don’t often buy cookies, but Grandma does, so please pass mommy the Oreos, honey.

See where I’m going with this?

So here I am in Florida, with my parents, and I find myself regressing to a different age, one where I sit elbow-to-elbow with my kids, eating Captain Crunch for breakfast (who can resist the lure of the crunchberry?), requesting special mom/grandma-made tuna sandwiches, and watching more TV than is good for any reasonable human.

I miss my husband and can’t wait to get back to my real home, but for now I’m enjoying every minute of being both a parent and a kid again.

Veronica Wolff is an award-winning, bestselling author with a soft spot for kilts and vampires. Not necessarily at the same time. Known for her Scottish time travel series, she's changing gears, launching two new series with the Penguin Group: The Clan MacAlpin Novels, featuring a family of strapping, seventeenth-century Highlanders, and The Watchers, starring a group of vampires and the teenaged girls who train to watch over them.