Debbie’s parents were completely incompetent. They weren’t bad people, they were just bad at being people in the modern world. They seemed to always make the wrong decision, and trust the wrong people. Even when it was for the best of reasons. It left them constantly unemployed, broke, running and hiding from unpaid debt collectors and landlords. Debbie got a scholarship to the university and never looked back.
In her junior year she met Henry who was a senior. He was a great guy and they had a lot of fun together. He showed her a whole world that she had never known. The two continued to date after Henry graduated and Henry’s family made her feel at home. Heck, they had darn near adopted Debbie into the family before Henry had even proposed to her.
When they were starting out as a young married couple, Henry’s parents, Don and Iris, introduced them to all of the people who would help them network. Bankers, investment counselors, insurance agents, realtors … They helped them find a good school for the kids and schedule great vacations. Basically any and every thing that any newly married couple needed.
Debbie’s parents missed the wedding because of a flat tire and the birth of their first child for some other lame reason. Her mom clipped and mailed coupons to her in bunches for products they wouldn’t use sold at out-of-town stores. They usually arrived postage due and out-of date.
But Henry’s brothers and sisters were welcoming to Debbie as well. With them, Don and Iris, Debbie had the family she never had growing up.
When Henry and Debbie had children, Grandma Iris always came over to thier house to babysit so the infants and toddlers didn’t have to travel. “The Grands” were always involved with their grandkids even to the point of specifically inviting the kids to come and “stay over” so that Henry and Debbie could have romantic “date nights” out on the town together.
Harry Chapin sang ‘All My Life’s a Circle.’ And life really is a circle. When you’re born you are completely helpless and others take care of all of your needs. Then you enter a stage of life where you learn how to take care of yourself. Then – hopefully – you learn how to take care of others. You get to be the one who actually takes care of others. Finally, not as strong as you used to be – but hopefully wiser and learned – you pass along your accumulated knowledge to those younger while others take care of you.
So when Don and Iris got to the point where their physical limitations threatened to send them into assisted living, Debbie and Henry built an addition onto their house – “Mother-in-law’s quarters” the contractors and realtors called it – so “The Grands” could remain independent.
Debbie and Iris had a great relationship. They talked about everything including Debbie’s sexual relationship with Henry and Iris’s relationship with Don. Debbie was thrilled for Iris that she had a good physical relationship with Don into later life. Neither Debbie nor Henry were prudish. Henry had for instance told Debbie that he had a brief but very significant romantic relationship with his older sister, Juno. How she comforted him after he broke up with his girlfriend his freshman year of college.
So Debbie was heartbroken the day that Iris, while talking about something else, mentioned and then when prompted explained that she had been unable to take Don vaginally for a time due to health issues and that their sex life consisted mostly of her giving Don hand jobs and blow jobs and Don reciprocating orally.
But now, Iris’es arthritis was getting worse. While Don was happy to continue servicing her, she felt absolutely awful about the fact that she was unable to reciprocate for him. After thinking the situation over Debbie asked Henry to take her out for a private lunch.
“Honey,” Debbie said after the waiter was out of earshot, “I want you to ask you if it would be all right if I gave your father a hummer.”
Even said in private, it’s not really the kind of thing that a man expects his wife to ask. But Debbie knew Henry well and she figured the best way to ask was just to ask. Then she explained everything that she knew and everything that she felt. Henry thought about the guy who held the seat of his bicycle when he learned to ride, who played catch with him, and taught him to kick a soccer ball. He couldn’t really see anything wrong in his wife’s proposal.
So it was. For the last years of Don and Iris’es lives – as we know them to be – that at appropriate times … When there weren’t other people around, or situations that had to be dealt with. Debbie would get naked – Don never tired of seeing that little strip-tease and it wasn’t threatening to Iris who loved Debbie too – and she would get down on her knees on the plush carpeting in front of the leather couch.
Debbie would remove Don’s pants, and Iris’es dress, and Debbie would be their hands and their lips. Making love to each and both of them for the other. Don and Iris as they looked deeply into one another’s eyes – perhaps kissed gingerly – and enjoyed the most basic physical pleasure. The joy of making it thus far, and of just being alive.
Because, when you get right down to it, Debbie thought, there was nothing odd or weird about it. It was pretty a simple concept really once the bull-shit was stripped away. Just a daughter, or in this case a daughter-in-law, giving back. By taking care of the people who had always taken care of her since she had first come into their lives all those years ago. How on earth could she, in good conscious, not.