RaisingDad

When my Dad thought his radio was broken, and all it turned out to be was that the volume control knob was turned down, it made me laugh... but it made me sad, too.      There was a time when there was nothing my Dad couldn't build or couldn't fix. When he was twelve years old-- eighty-one years ago! --he used work on his uncle's car for the opportunity to drive it around town. For all I know, even at twelve, he was trying to woo the fairer sex with a ride in his jalopy. When he was in the Army during World War II, and stationed in the Philippines, he built a washing machine for his platoon. He used a metal barrel, a jeep... and his own personal smarts. I don't know if there was even such a thing as a washing machine back in the 40's, but my Dad had one, the one he built. I have a picture of it. He's standing next to it with a big smile on his face, proud as all get out. Years later, after he was married and I was old enough to pay attention, I r...

I'm at the kitchen counter enjoying a nice hot cup of coffee, reading this month's issue of the AARP magazine. Yeah, I'm that old. My wife is cleaning the counter tops. My Dad walks in. I look over the top of my magazine. He has a look on his face. I recognize that look. He has a problem. And it's about to become my problem.      "Ahhh," he says. Smack, smack, smack! Click, click, click! My Dad makes these smacking noises when he talks. Even when he doesn't talk. Sometimes when he just sits. Now he's started making clicking noises as well. "Hmm, I don't know. I just don't know."      "Don't know what, Dad?" my wife makes the mistake of asking him. She has a heart of gold, she does. My Dad shakes his head, and lets out a weak laugh.      "I don't know about those house cleaners you have," he tells my wife, seeing as she's the only one listening to him. "You know those house cleaners?"      ...

It's not the big things that you drive you nuts... it's the little things.      When I first asked my 93 year-old father to move in with me and my family, I knew that there would be a period of adjustment. What I didn't know was just how long that period of adjustment would be. Here it is, years later, and I'm still adjusting.      My father? He's doing just fine.      My father had been the head of his household well into his 80's. Myself, I've been in charge of my own life since I turned 18, when I put what little I remembered from school about geography to use and went to college out of state.      As a kid, I learned early on that no one was allowed to touch my father's morning newspaper until he was finished reading it. And he took a looong time reading it.      "Pop," I would ask him, "can I have the comics?"      "No," he would always answer. My father was...

When I was a kid I must have driven my parents crazy.      When they took me to the store, I was always asking them to buy me something. Spiderman comic books. The Man From UNCLE camera that turned into a gun.      And candy.      I was always asking for candy.      "You'll ruin your teeth!" my mother would warn me.      I'd think to myself, "If I can't have candy, what's the point of having good teeth?"      This was before I discovered girls, and how they had the annoying habit of preferring guys with good dental hygiene.      I remember one Christmas, when I was about ten-years-old, I pestered my parents for a chemistry set that was probably more expensive than they could afford, but, on Christmas morning... there it was.      Did I play with it?      Not even once.      ...