Family

What can you say about 80 something parents that plan your retirement?
My case: I am 52 years old this October, admittedly a life time under-achiever, who started childhood with a golden talented promise. I grew up in a household my friends envied. My educator parents provided a home rich with musical instruments, books, pets, art and art supplies, and talk (I can't say discussion since our position was to listen to our father expound.) They provided rich experiences (family camping, folkdance, museums, and much more.) We were easy, non-rebellious, and isolated children. My parents were never strict, never demanding, quite permissive although we rarely pushed boundaries. We were compliant and very addicted to reading, television, and of course food.
Imagine my surprise when at my first hint of self assertion, namely the desire to take a year off after high school and work at a JOB, my father freaked and ranted how I would get stuck in a $ 2.00/hr job for the rest of my life, how I would never go to college, and that I should set up a basement studio and write children's books, but that I must register part-time at least in the local college.
The reader of this ramble will at this point be saying, "So what. You're parents didn't make you work and contribute to your keep. You had it soft, nothing to do but go to school." Such a reader would have missed the point. I wanted real experience, adult experience. That was the real problem my father had with my plans. I wanted to be the adult my high school diploma promised I could be. The shock was, Didn't he know me? I wasn't avoiding college for small money. I wanted to find my own reason for going, set my own course and develop it. Going to college was never in doubt. Really, I didn't know my father. He was used to being in control. It is just that I never knew that he was. I am still learning about him now.
I began this by referring to my retirement and my father's plans for it. As I said, I am 52. I am a special education high school teacher. I am a single mother supporting a 18 year old son in a New York City apartment. My father recently proposed that when I retire I come and live with my mentally disabled sister in Maine, in the house that they bought so that my sister would always have a home and any of her four children and any great-grands that might need a place to live when in need. Really they are afraid that her dead beat ex-husband will move back in on her when he runs out of girlfriends and money and my sister will not have the guts to say no. But my sister has three capable daughters. Whereas I have no real authority in that family. My nephew shows every sign of becoming a clone of his red-neck, white trash father. I would have to assert authority in a daily fight over him. Some retirement.
More to the point, Do I look like a spinster old maid daughter to them? Again, my sister has three capable if selfish daughters. And I have a capable son whose company I enjoy. Last year, my father suggested that when I retire I live with my bachelor brother in the house that they deeded to him (another family house just in case) and be his old age companion. I must have a sign on my head: "Incapable Woman with no life". At least in their eyes.