I'dalways imagined that when my parents got too old (past it) they would come and live with me.
My husband, a second-hand car dealer named Wayne or possibly Dirk, would be very understanding, and my children would benefit from having older and wiser influences around.
Like a real Indian family, I thought.
My brothers and I have always joked that when my mother succumbs to craziness we would construct a snug cage for her in one of the four garages, and install a telephone so she could gossip to her women friends.
For my father we would build a tin hut (in the old forest service style) and chopper it in to some remote location in the back country of the Southern Alps.
We would ensure a good supply of Yorkshire tea, alpine journals and audio books, and let him live out the rest of his days in peace. If he had enough time left, we might buy him a mongrel dog.
Depending on how I felt about my parents at the time, my plan for caring for them in their old age would veer between these two extremes.
It always seemed important, this idea that one day you would have to "do something" with the oldies.
A few years ago my grandparents came to stay.
They have been divorced for more than 40 years but still get along well, and are happy enough to share a bed when space is tight.
It was the week of my 17th birthday, and a fancy dinner was planned - I was going to bring home a new friend, Chelsea.
Just as the salmon was served a family argument broke out.
My grandfather, who worked as a translator in the Indian Army, was blustering on about the "bloody Japs" and my parents were up in arms.
I was silent, embarrassed, but Chelsea sat transfixed - hooked on the family drama.
I remember that week as a tough one.
Of course there were enjoyable moments, but having two elderly people to care for created a lot of extra work.
My grandfather always liked to have someone to talk too, and had to be kept from reaching for the whisky at 3pm.
My grandmother liked lunch on the dot of 12, and would sit at the kitchen bench expectantly as we rushed around throwing something edible together.
We couldn't watch anything on TV that might offend them, and we missed Friends because they wanted to watch all of the weather.
Dinner was punctuated by coughing fits and shouts of "Speak up, god damnit! I can't hear you!" and I would try to hold my temper as I boomed down the table "The salt, Grandad! Please pass the salt!"At the end of the week's visit I had changed my mind.
I couldn't have my parents live with me - they could very well ruin my life.
For the last year I have been based in Cambodia, where the traditional model of the extended family is still the norm.
My Cambodian colleagues, who earned only one quarter of what I did for the same amount of work, distributed their salary every month to a vast and complicated network of relations.
Fifty dollars to feed your mother.
Twenty dollars to make an offering to your dead father's spirit.
Thirty dollars to your sister's second-rate university.
Forty dollars to help pay off your brother's debt, and $25 for your cousin's new business venture.
At the end of the week, money would be flying across the office as people tried to scrape together enough for petrol to make the journey to their homeland.
Once home you would pay respects to your uncles by drinking rice wine with them (and you couldn't really leave until they were decidedly drunk), help your nephews and nieces with their halting English, and slaughter a pig because few of your 60 relatives had eaten any meat that week.
My friend Thara (30) still can't sleep in a room alone.
He has grown up surrounded by his family, and it is all he knows.
As a child, he would fall asleep in the middle of his four brothers, and as an adult, still sleeps in a room with eight other people.
My Cambodian friends were always very worried that I was so far away from my family.
"How could I live?" they would ask with concern.
I've changed my mind again.
When the time comes, and my parents can no longer get by independently, I hope I will be able to follow the Cambodian example.
Maybe they can even move in before that, if I happen to live somewhere that they might enjoy.
And when they do - we will have meat for dinner. - Ellie Ainge Roy is a freelance journalist.
