Isn't He Ever Happy?

My Dad and I are sitting in the great room.
     I have my back to him. I'm drinking coffee and writing on this blog, which is what I do when I'm not buffing the oak floors or being driven nuts by my father.
     My Dad is drinking his tea. My wife makes it special for him every morning and every day.
     "What do you do to make it so special?" I asked her once. I was teasing her, so I didn't really expect an answer.
     "I make it with love," she tells me, putting me in my place.
     And she does. Makes it with love, I mean.
 
     I look up from my computer. I think I hear my Dad, um, gargling?
     Hmm... I sit, listen, and wait.
     A few seconds later I hear him gargling again.
     Slowly, like my imaginary days as a SEAL Team Six soldier, I get up and walk to an area where I can watch him and not be seen. I watch as my Dad takes a sip of tea from his cup, tilts his head back, and gargles. He does this four or five times.

     Just to make sure that I'm seeing what I'm seeing and hearing what I'm hearing, I asked him, "How's the tea, Dad?"
     My father looks at me, lifts his cup at me in a kind of toast.
     "Your wife makes good tea." he says, takes a sip. "Ahhhh," he says, appreciatively.
 
     I don't know if I've told you, but I like to hike. My Dad likes to walk and I like to hike. I guess it runs in the family. Hopefully, when I turn 95-years-old like my father recently has, I'll still be high-stepping it just like him.

     One day, I had just finished a hike. I won't tell you where it was, but it was pretty grand. I like to start early so I can finish early. I don't like waking up early to accomplish this, but that's the price I have to pay. Anyway...
     I was standing next to this heavy (for you politically incorrect types: fat) guy. He was with his whole family, including his mother-in-law, who was wearing Gucci hiking boots.
     Gucci hiking boots?
     Yes, Gucci hiking boots.
     I didn't even know they made Gucci hiking boots. What serious hiker wears crap like that?
     Anyway, there were four or five young kids, an excessively grown man with a very expensive watch, his wife, and his mother-in-law. They were all wearing expensive hiking clothes. I guess they were there to entertain me, because that's what they were doing. I would have already been heading home, having accomplished what I went there to accomplish.
     The abundantly grown man was waiting for his wife to come back. She had gone to get him a steak lunch, because, as everybody knows, you want to get as full as you can on as heavy a meal as possible, before you go on a hike.
     Mr. Fat-Ass Guy, I call him that with all due respect, was bragging to anyone who had the misfortune to be within listening distance of him, that he was going to hike down for a few miles. To make a long story short, he left wearing brand new boots (they didn't look broken in), cheap shorts (made from the finest polyester blend that money could buy) and an Under Amour (that was too small and not-long-enough) long-sleeve t-shirt. Plus, the day was already starting to warm up nicely. Hot hikes are another reason I wake up so early to perform my insanities. I call my hiking insanities because it's not like I get paid for them. There's not a cash prize at the end of my hike. But it combines the top two things I love: Working Hard and Working For Free.

     So, with great fanfare, he leaves into his Trail of Tears, smiling and talking to himself as he leaves. I look back and see his whole family in a souvenir store. Instead of joining her husband on his hike, the guy's wife is buying $35 t-shirts for all the kids, a $50 walking pole for her mother who I notice isn't walking, and a new $300 Grand Canyon watch for her husband, complaining all the while that he doesn't wear cheap watches. I couldn't help but notice the watch he had been wearing. It looked expensive... but it sure wasn't a Rolex. The wife even buys a couple of $45 t-shirts for a stranger that she just met.
     Unfortunately, I'm not the stranger. My wife and father would have liked those t-shirts, and I would have liked not being the one paying for those t-shirts. Anyway...
     The mother-in-law looks at me. She sees me looking at her in her Gucci hiking boots and carrying her brand new walking pole (which is the proper way to use a walking pole: you carry it). She smiles. I smile back.
     One thing I've noticed as I've gotten older is that no matter how old we get, we still like to flirt and feel attractive to the opposite sex, just like when we were teenagers.
     A few hours later I see the guy returning from his hike. I have to laugh because he's still got his expensive boots, but he's carrying them in  his hands... and the soles are completely gone! He's not even wearing socks, he's walking barefooted.
     Picture this: brand news boot with no bottoms! He completely wore the soles down to nothing. He gets to his family and starts complaining about his brand-new boots and his brand-new socks, and how they didn't even make it fifty yards before they started falling apart.
     His whole family were sitting in the shade waiting for him and eating ice cream that his wife had paid for. They were ignoring him as best they could without actually being rude about it. I guess they've heard all this before.
     The mother-in-law turns to me (No, really, she does.) and whispers confidentially, "Isn't he ever happy?"

 
 

Raising My Father

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What Can I Do?

It's Sunday morning.
     I'm sitting outside drinking my second cup of coffee. I've already read the Sunday newspaper. Twice. Well, not really. I've already read the Sunday newspaper twice, except for the front page section.
     My Dad is inside sitting at the kitchen table finishing his breakfast. He's got a healthy appetite, but he eats slowly. Very slowly. It's not that he's some kind of half-human/half-turtle hybrid. He'll move fast enough if I drop a twenty on the floor. He'll pick it up and say it's his with a speed The Flash would envy.
     No, I think he's eats slow because he has the whole day ahead of him with nothing to do, so he figures, "What's the rush?"
     He's already read the front page, and it sits to his right. Next to his plate. He's got his elbow on the paper. Just enough of his elbow to let the world know that it's his.
     Like my twenty
     Have I ever told you about my dogs? I've got two. Well, one, really. One's my dad's and the other one's mine. Mine is the big one. He's big and goofy and he has a lot of heart. My Dad's is the small one. It does nothing but bark.
     And stink up the house.
     Anyway, my big dog has a small plastic chew toy that it loves. The small one could not care less about that chew toy. That is, until the big one has it. And then the small one makes it his life's purpose to take the chew toy away from the big one.
     Like I said, the big one has a good heart, so it tolerates the smaller one when it finally manages to snatch the toy away from him. Sometimes the smaller one will snatch the toy right out of the big one's mouth. A mouth, I might add, that could crush the smaller one's spine into powder with very little effort, if he was so incline.
     But he's not inclined.
     What the smaller one does, since it has no interest in the chew toy, is it will walk over to it's favorite square of carpet and lay down, the chew toy placed carefully by his side. If the big one comes close, the little one will growl. If the big one gets too close, the little one will bare his teeth. If the big one makes a move for the toy, the little one will snap. Why my Dad's dog likes to go through such measures to keep that chew toy--the one it cares nothing about--away from my dog, well, who knows why a dog does what dog does?
     My dog has to wait until the little one finally gets tired of protecting a toy it doesn't want and walks away from it before he can reclaim it. It's the same with food. We have to serve the two dogs in two separate bowls, because the little one can't guard two bowls of food at the same time.
     My Dad is like his dog. He'll sit at the breakfast table, with his elbow on that newspaper until he finally gets tired of guarding a newspaper he's already read. I don't know why he does it, or if he does it on purpose, but he does it. My Dad does what my Dad does and that's that.
     By the time he gets up and leaves, I'm already on to other things. Maybe I'll have a chance to read it later, most times I don't. It doesn't matter. There will be more bad news tomorrow. But since I brought up my Dad's little dog...
     It seems like I have to bathe that little barking machine every week. The dog smells like shit. I mean, literally. It smells like shit. I'm surprised the Haz-Mat team from OSHA don't arrive at my front door.
     I thought maybe because the dog is taken for a walk every morning that it was always stepping in something or it was just the dog's natural body odor. You've known people like that, I'm sure. People who have a certain aroma through no fault of their own. The aroma of bacon comes to mind.

     So I have to bathe that dog almost every week and wash his butt with sandpaper (not really), making sure he's clean, but a week later, the dog smells like shit again.
     Today, like I said, I'm outside enjoying my coffee. My Dad finally gets around to taking his little stinker for a walk, and my wife brings me some home-baked cookies made from scratch. She also brings me the front page.
     I guess I'll keep her.
     It's one of those mornings where I have no plans and nothing to do, so I'm able to pretend I'm my Dad and take my time reading what's wrong with the world. When I'm done, just as I put the newspaper down, my Dad gets back from his walk.

      My Dad, not really talking to anyone in particular, especially me, says out loud, "Boy o' boy, this dog really had to go, lots of poop." I'm surprised that information didn't make the front page.
     He then takes the towel he uses to wipe his sweaty face with and wipes the dog's butt with it. I've never seen anyone do that before. And then, with the same towel, my Dad wipes the dog all over. Now, I've really never seen anyone do that before. No wonder the poor dog smells like shit. He's cleaning the dog's butt after it poops, and then wipes the shit all over the dog.
     I guess he thinks the dog sweats or something, and needs to be wiped off like it's just been working out in a gym. But a dog sweats with its tongue, not with various sweat glands like a human. Which begs the question: If a dog sweats with its tongue, then what are its armpits for? Anyway...
     I mention this later to my wife, and she tells me, "Oh, yeah, he does that after every walk."
     And nobody thought to tell me before now? I had to witness it for myself? I had almost hired Thomas Magnum and his black buddy who flies a helicopter to solve the case of the shitty-smelling dog, and it turns out there was a conspiracy to keep that information from the poor guy who was bathing the poor dog every other week?
     "And you don't find that odd?" I ask her.
     "Sure, I find that odd," she tells me, "but what can I do about it?"
     She's got a point.
     I think that maybe I should ask my Dad about it, but do I really want to sit through whatever explanation he's going to come up with? He won't have an explanation that I or Charlie Manson would find reasonable, but he'll have an explanation. And that explanation will end up taking longer than I'll care to sit and listen to.
     So, like my wife says, what can I do?
     Nothing.
     But bath the dog more often.

 
 

Raising My Father

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Call Me Mac

I wrote the following after reading a profile about Bruce Dern in Rolling Stone magazine. After sending it to him, I got the usual Hollywood reply: "Don't call us, we'll call you." If anybody can send me the zip code to his PO Box in Santa Monica, California, I would appreciate it.

 
Night.
     It's dark and it's beautiful.
     Somewhere in the blackness, a door opens and closes.
     Now there's just a sliver of light on the horizon, but just a sliver. No more than a razor slice of light, really.
     And now someone running toward it.
 
     It's morning now. A pretty blonde lady, Laura, is busy. She's preparing breakfast in her kitchen. Her husband, Henry, walks in, and, after a kiss good morning, sits at the kitchen counter where the newspaper waits for him.
     "Would you look at this?" Henry tells his wife, acting surprised. "The newspaper."
     She looks back over her shoulder and smiles.
     No sooner does she turn her head back forward than the same door we heard earlier opens and closes again.
     "Good morning, dad," Laura says as her father walks into the kitchen.
     "Good morning, Mac," Henry says to his father-in-law.
     Mac grunts a kind of reply and takes the seat next to Henry, and then takes the newspaper from him as well for good measure.
     Laura comes over with two cups of coffee. A look passes between her and her husband. She places the cups down in front of the two men in her life as close to the same time as possible. It's a fine line she walks, and she walks it well.
     "How far did you run?" Henry says, trying to be polite.
     "I don't play attention to that shit," Mac answers, showing no such pretense for politeness. He begins reading the newspaper.
 
     Later that day, Mac is sitting in the great room and watching a baseball game on the big-screen TV. He's also fiddling with his running shoes. Tying them, untying them, and then re-tying them all over again.
     Henry and Laura are sitting at the kitchen table, both sipping there coffee. Either they take their time with it, or they drink an awful lot of it. Who am I to judge?
     "You know," Henry tells his wife, "when I retired, I thought I'd be the one sitting in front of the TV watching sports."
     "I know, honey. I know," his wife says, but she doesn't. Not really.
     She looks over to her father. Watches him fuss a bit.
     "What's wrong, pop?" she asks.
     "My shoe-laces," her father complains, frustrated. "They always keep coming undone. They never used to."
     "Maybe you need to tie them tighter," she suggests.
     "They never used to," her father continues, dismissing her suggestion. "The last pair of running shoes I had, the laces never came untied."
     "You want me to buy you new laces, dad?"
     "What?"
     "You want me to buy you new laces?"
     "I don't want new laces. I want my old laces." He pauses. "And feet. I want my old feet back, too."
     He looks over at his daughter and her husband. It looks like somewhere along the line they've stopped paying attention.
     "They hurt," he says. "They never used to hurt. Damn shoes."
     "They don't hurt because he has new shoes," Henry teasingly whispers to his wife. "They hurt because he has old feet."
     "My old ears hear just fine," Mac says, a bit indignant.
     "I'll get you some new laces, dad."
     "What?"
 
     Later, at Heebie-Jeebies, a super-grocery store, Laura and Henry are looking at shoe-laces in the shoe department. Their cart is filled with healthy foods and items. Laura likes to cook from scratch. A rare preference these days.
     "It's not the shoe-laces," Henry tells Laura.
     "I know," she says. And she does.
     A lady walks by with her four-year-old toddler toddling along. His laces are untied.
     "Remember when April was a toddler?" she asks. "We were always having to tie her shoes. They were always coming undone." Thoughtful pause. "My dad's like having another toddler."
     "One who steals my newspaper," Henry says.

     Back home, Laura enters the house and walks over to her father, who is still watching baseball, while Henry brings in the groceries.
     "I bought you laces, dad," she tells him.
     "Just leave them there," he tells her, indicating no place in particular. "I'll put them one later."
     "I don't mind," and she doesn't.
     "No, really. I can do it," he says, but makes no attempt to stop her.
     Like Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, she takes the running shoes off of his feet, replaces the laces, and then puts them back on.
     Henry brings in the last bag.
     "Who's playing," he asks his father-in-law.
     "If it's not Detroit, I don't really care," his father-in-law replies.
     Mac has a talent for making you regret asking him anything.
 
     After awhile, Mac gets up. Laura is still putting away the groceries.
     "I'm going for a run," he tells no one in particular.
     "Dad!"
     "What?"
     "It's hot!"
     "No, it's not."
     "Yes, it is."
     "No, it's not."
     "Yes, it is. Henry, tell him."
     "Yes, it is," Henry tells him.
     "No, it's not," Mac insists.
     "Dad," his daughter tells him, "trust us, we were just outside. It's hot>"
     "Where I'm going, it's hot. This is nothing."
     He leaves. the front door opening and shutting once again. Laura looks at Henry.
     "What?" Henry says.
     "Stop him," she tells her husband.
     Henry looks in the direction of his father-in-law, and then back at his wife.
     "Honey," he tells her, "I would have to break his legs to stop him. You know that."
     Yeah. She knows.
 
     A very pretty older lady is sitting on a bench at a park. Sometimes, when you get older, you have nothing to do, and that's just what she's doing.
     Mac comes jogging up. He stops and plops himself down next to her. He starts fiddling with his running shoes.
     "My laces," he tells her, for some reason feeling like he needs to give her some kind of an explanation. "They're always coming untied."
     She apprises the situation.
     "Maybe you should double-knot them," she says.
     Mac stops what he's doing and turns his head. Apprising her.
     "What?"
     "Maybe you should double-knot your shoe-laces. That way they won't come undone.."
     "You know," he says, running an old wrinkly hand through his grey, thinning hair, "that's the first time anybody's ever given me a solution to a problem."
     "Really?"
     "My kids... all they want to do is throw money at a problem, buy their way out of a jam, you would think they were politicians."
     "Really?"
     "Yeah, they have money, but they never have solutions."
     "I'm Diane," she tells him, offering her hand.
     "Call me Mac."
 
 

Raising My Father

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Can We Talk About Me Now?

I bought a ginger ale the other day and it had no ginger in it.
     It was made with carbonated water, pure cane sugar (which is just processed sugar... the healthiest kind), and artificial & natural extracts and flavors. It also had citric acid and caramel color. Not caramel, but caramel color. And, by the way, how do you even pronounce caramel? With two syllables or three?
     I've been corrected both ways.
     Is it "car-a-mel" or "car-mel"? I always thought Carmel was the town where Clint Eastwood was mayor. At any rate, before this turns into a story about me complaining about to-may-toes or to-mah-toes, let me get to my main point...
     I was at Sam's yesterday. My wife I were getting away with only a few items this time around, since my Dad wasn't with us to toss additional unwanted items into the basket. Unfortunately, however, it wasn't few enough.
     We walked up to one of those do-it-yourself check-outs, and the hourly employee in charge told us, "Sorry, but it's only for ten items or less."
     I looked at her, and then I looked at the self-serve check-outs. There were four of them, and they were all empty. I looked at my cart. We only had about twenty items or so. If we were at Wal-Mart we could have slipped by the check-out police... but we weren't at Wal-Mart.
     So we moseyed on over to the other end of the check-outs where we saw a long line of people standing at the only check-out open. But not really. There was another check-out open right next to the long line, and that one only had one person in it. So that's the one I started heading for.
     "That one only takes flat-beds, sweetie," my wife told me.
     I took a closer look and discovered my eagle-eyed wife was right. The one customer there had a flatbed, and the sign above the register said "Flatbeds Only."
     So, grumbling, I got to the tail-end of the long line. Meanwhile, the four self-serve check-outs were still empty and the lone customer at the Flatbed register was done, so the checker was just standing there all by himself poking his nose.
     I'm not saying my line didn't go fast, because it did, but if there are no customers at those other open lanes, then why couldn't they have siphoned off some of the irritated customers (mainly me) from the line I was standing in?
     I told all this to my buddy Maloney when I called him later that day.
     "You think you've got problems?" he told me. There's no conversation Maloney can't turn into a conversation about himself. "My mother-in-law..."
     Back when the Mega Million lotto jackpot was 400 million dollars, his mother-in-law bought a ticket. She'll go out to the Indian Casino and blow her social security check gambling, but she only buys one ticket for the lotto because, I guess, any more than that would be a waste of cash. She refuses to buy any tickets for the Power Ball, because the price went up to two bucks. Anyway...
     The Saturday morning after she buys her ticket, Maloney's sitting at the table eating breakfast. She comes over to him and with a poop-eating grin shows him her ticket.
     "If I win," she tells him, "I'll pay off your house."
     "That's nice," he politely tells her, but in the back of his mind he's thinking, Yeah, and what are you going to do with the three hundred ninety-nine million eight hundred thousand dollars that are left?
     Sadly, Maloney, unlike me, hasn't retired yet. He gets up every morning, Monday through Friday, at 3:30am to be at his job by 4:25am.
     Man, that's early. While he's busy getting ready for work, I'm busy waking up my wife with my snoring. Anyway...
     On one particular morning, Maloney gets up, gets dressed, and just as he's about to go to the bathroom to brush his teeth and take care of other bodily functions, he hears the bathroom door close. It was his mother-in-law. She had woken up and beaten him to the bathroom. And she was taking a long time. I mean, a looong time, if you get my drift.
     Maloney's wife wanted a new bathroom for the Master Bedroom and Maloney made the mistake of agreeing and doing the work himself to save money. So, as of right now, they're down to one bathroom for the whole family.
     Finally, she was done, and Maloney was running late, so he didn't have the time to let the bathroom air out. So he held his breath as best he could and went in.
     "All I could smell was that air freshener spray," he told me. "Whenever she goes to the bathroom, she sprays the heck out of it, so It smells like roses and..."
     "Can we talk about me now?" I asked him.
     But he was already complaining about something else.
 
 

Raising My Father

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@JimDuchene