Where's Dad? (Part Six)

It was good to see everybody at my Dad's family reunion.
     "Can we leave now?" I asked my wife.
     If looks could kill there wouldn't have been anyone alive within a thousand-mile radius.
     I can't get over it. According to the Law of Diminishing Returns, for every year that passes there should be less people at these reunions, but instead there always seems to be MORE. And all those additional family members are hard on my Dad, who doesn't consider his trip a success until he's unintentionally insulted every relative there. And some who aren't.
     "Stand up straight," he told the wife of one of his brothers as she walked past him.
     She's has osteoporosis.
     "Are you pregnant?" he asked one of his nieces.
     She's close to 60.
     "Well, she looked pregnant," he shrugged as she stormed off.
     I wish I could say that my Dad's verbal boners were something that's developed as he's gotten older, but, no, he's been like that all of his life. He's never had an interior editor. Whatever he thinks, he says.
     There's never been a gift I've given him that he hasn't thanked me for it by giving me a back-handed compliment. One time I got him a box of 12 T-bone steaks for his birthday.
     "Thanks, son," he told me. "They almost look as good as the ones from Costco."
     Another time, when my mother was still alive, my wife and I took them on a cruise. As we walked along the beach of Ensenada, Mexico, my Dad looked out over the ocean and said, "You know, I've been to beaches prettier than this one."
     "Honey!" my Mom said.
     "What?" my Dad said back.
     I know it was my his way of telling us how pretty the beach was, but my wife still had to give my hand a squeeze to make sure I didn't say something that would spoil our nice trip.
     "It's too late," I should have told her. "My Dad has already beaten me to it."
     Still, my father isn't the only one who suffers from diarrhea of the mouth. One of my cousins--who, age-wise, is more like one of my uncles--kept asking my wife, "Didn't you used to have brown hair?" He was thinking of my first wife. The one who, if there ever was a Zombie Apocalypse, would fit right in.
     My wife just smiled and nodded politely. When she's around my family, that's what she does best. Smiles and nods politely.
     Sometime during the reunion, someone told my wife that someone else saw my dad walking away from the gathering.
     "Who saw him?" she asked.
     "I don't know," they answered.
     "How long ago did he leave?"
     "I'm not sure."
     "Which direction did go?"
     "You'll have to ask the person who saw him leave."
     "But you don't know who that is?"
     "No."
     He's now MIA. My wife quickly found me, and, after taking a quick look around and not finding him ourselves, we gathered together a search party. We go up and down the streets, yelling, "Dad! Dad!"
     But no Dad.
     Somewhere along the line, my wife and I split up. She goes one way, I go another. Unfortunately, the way I go... no Dad. I call a few relatives who's cell phone numbers I had the presence of mind to key into my phone. They're back at the gathering.
     "Couldn't find him," was the general consensus. Maybe if my Dad hadn't insulted so many people, they would have tried harder.
     My phone went off. It was from my wife. She and a cousin I don't remember the name of, found him a MILE from where the reunion was being held. What was he trying to do? Walk back home? It was sheer luck and determination that they found him. I think they were looking for a Starbucks.
     "He's okay," she told me, "but his eyes were as big as saucers. He was lost, but he didn't want to admit it."
     My wife had been running all this time in sandals. Her feet were killing her and now had to walk another mile back. Later, she told me, "When I saw him I felt sorry for him, he looked like he was about to cry. He was looking around like he didn't recognize anything."
     Back at the party, he was the belle of the ball, at least until the next stubborn old geezer wandered off. Everybody wanted to know why he didn't tell anyone he was taking off.
     "I wanted to go for a walk," he told them, simply, "so I went for a walk."
     It's amazing how brave a person gets when they're safe and sound.

 

 

Raising My Father

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I'll Buy You Some (Part Five)

After eating all of my wife's breakfast and even some of mine, my Dad goes into the bathroom of the hotel room we're staying in to get ready for this special day. He's in there for over an hour.
     Over an hour!
     I don't know what he's doing in there, especially since he was already in there for half the night keeping my wife and I awake with his midnight shenanigans. After he's done making himself beautiful for the family he hasn't seen since last year's reunion, he comes out and tells my wife that he couldn't find his shaving cream so he used one of her creams.
     My wife's eyes go wide. All of her creams are expensive.
     "Uh, which one did you use, Dad?" she asks him.
     "I don't know," he tells her. "It was the one in the little bottle."
     I know exactly the one he's talking bout.
     It's a little Bobby Brown face cream that sells for about the price of gold and gets rid of wrinkles and makes your skin more youthful.
     "You're already youthful," I tell my wife, but it doesn't work. She continues to spend my retirement on the expensive cream.
     Once, my Dad and I went with her to the mall and we found ourselves over at the Bobby Brown section. My Dad wouldn't normally be interested in cosmetics, but since what we needed was located right next to lingerie department my embarrassed Dad stayed close by.
     "What's that you're buying?" he asked my wife.
     "It's a face cream," she told him.
     He looked at the size, which was very small indeed, and asked her if it was a free sample.
     "No, Dad," she told him. "This is the cream."
     "It's small."
     "Yes, but you only use a little of it at a time, so it lasts."
     "How much is it?" enquiring minds wanted to know.
     My wife told him, and my Dad's eyes popped out like Roger Rabbits.
     "How much?" my Dad asked her again, looking at me, looking at her, and looking back at me. His eyes were bulging out as if we were expecting him to pay for it. "Boy," he said, "when they put the price tag on that cream, they must have saw you coming."
     "That doesn't even make sense, Dad," I told him, because I didn't want him to say something that would hurt my wife's feelings.
     He looked at me with his big bug eyes.
     "It's expensive, because it works," my wife told him. I could tell she was upset, because she didn't call him "Dad" the way she usually does.
     His big bug eyes went back at her.
     "Those expensive creams don't work," he told her. "I saw it on The View. You can use lard or shortening and it's the same thing."
     "Yeah," I interjected, again wanting to head things off at the pass, "but who wants to smell like lard?"
     My wife said nothing. She just stood there holding her cream.
     My Dad just stood there with his eyes still bulging. His wallet still firmly packed into his rear pant pocket.
     I looked over to the lingerie department where I saw... well, it doesn't matter what I saw.
     "Those expensive creams aren't any good," my Dad says finally, and then he wanders off. That's his way of getting the last word.
     "Those creams don't work," I told my wife, "because you're already beautiful."
     My wife looks at me gratefully.
     I don't know how I come up with lines like that some times. Maybe she'll show me just how grateful she is later, when we get home, and then I can use what I saw in the lingerie department to my advantage. Anyway...

     My wife moves quickly and goes into the restroom. I won't say she's in a panic, I'd say she's more afraid to find out what she knows has just happened and wants to get the discovery over with quickly. Like pulling a band aid off. An incredibly expensive band aid.
     She walks out of the bathroom holding a little jar for me to see. Around, it's about the size of an Eisenhower dollar, and about an inch high. She's got the cap off and is showing me that it's almost empty. My Dad has used most of that expensive face cream. I'm guessing as shaving cream, but who knows. He might have used it because he was all out of Preparation H.
     My wife buries the cream somewhere deep in her luggage. A dark labyrinth so packed and foreboding with women's undies that not even my nosy Dad will go there.

     Just as my Dad is putting on his shoes, he remembers something, gets up, and walks into the restroom. We hear him shuffling around and moving things here and there, to and fro, Garfunkle and Oates. He walks out a second later and asks my wife for her cream.
     "What do you want it for?" she asks him right back.
     "I want to use some on my feet," he tells her. "That's good cream."
     There's nothing my wife won't do for my father. If he needed a kidney, even at his age, she would gladly give him one of mine.
     "I'll buy you some," she tells him, and then firmly shuts and locks her luggage.
   

   

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The Most Important Meal Of The Day (Part Four)

The next morning, my wife steps out to get us breakfast.
     The hotel we're staying at has a delicious "free" hot breakfast. Eggs, bacon, pancakes, French toast... you know, the works. I say "free," because they're not fooling anybody. You and I both know their just adding the cost of it to the price of the room. Still, the breakfast is delicious.
     Despite this, my Dad tells her, "Nothing for me. I'm not hungry."
     Not hungry? After all that fussing around he did in the bathroom last night? I thought for sure he'd have worked up an appetite.
     "Should I bring him something anyway?" she asks me, not wanting her father-in-law to start his morning without the most important meal of the day. She's good that way.
     I tell her not to.
     "You know how he is," I tell her. "If Dad says he's not hungry, he's not hungry." She's still not sure, so I continue. "Besides, he's always saying you feed him too much."
     That convinces her. Sort of. She turns back to my father, who's busy rubbing his feet.
     "Are you sure you don't want breakfast, Dad?" she asks one last time, giving him a final chance to change his mind.
     "I said I'm not hungry," he grunts, and continues rubbing his feet. That's his way of being polite.
     My Dad? Not hungry? Is this the same man who plants himself at the head of the kitchen table in the morning and won't leave until a huge breakfast magically appears before him? And, after stuffing himself, counts the minutes until lunch magically appears? For a skinny old coot, my Dad can sure pack it away.
     She looks at me. I look at her.
     She shrugs her shoulders. I lift my eyebrows.
     We look at my Dad again. We look back at each other again.
     Finally, with a sigh, she leaves. Meanwhile, taking advantage of my few minutes of down time, I jump in the shower. I'm out by the time she returns with our breakfast. As I towel myself off, she tells me through the door that she's going to get us some coffee.
     "That's fine, sweetie," I say and continue to make myself adorable for her.
     When she returns, I hear her stop just as she enters the room.
     "Honey," she calls in her come-and-see voice. So I come and see.
     My Dad is sitting in front of our food and has eaten all of her breakfast. I say "hers," because I'm an bacon & eggs kind of guy. My Dad used to be one, too. Until my wife began to spoil him. In his prime, my father wouldn't have recognized a blueberry if you had poked him in the eye with one. Now that he's been introduced to my wife's five-star gourmet meals, he doesn't consider pancakes to be complete unless they've been smothered in whipped cream and some kind of sweet fruit topping.
     Anyway...
     "That was good," my Dad tells us, reaching over to my plate, grabbing my toast, and wiping up the last of my wife's egg yoke.

 

   

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What's Wrong With Motel 6? (Part Three)

We stay at a pretty nice place. For my Dad, it's nothing but the best. As long as I'm paying.
     Kiddingly, before we left, I told him, "I got us a pretty good deal at the Motel 6, Dad."
     "What?"
     "The Motel 6."
     "What about the Motel 6?"
     "That's where we're staying. At the Motel 6. I got us a pretty good deal."
     "We're not staying at the Motel 6."
     "Why not? It's a perfectly good motel."
     "We're not staying at the Motel 6."
     "It's clean. It's cheap. And the guy from those Motel 6 commercials will personally leave the light on for us."
     I laugh at my own bad joke.
     "Well," my Dad says, his eyes starting to bulge out from the anxiety of having to stay at a sub-standard motel. I'm so evil sometimes, it makes me laugh. "YOU can stay at the Motel 6, if you want, but I'm not."
     "You're not what?"
     "What?"
     "You're not what, Dad?"
     "I'M not staying at the Motel 6."
     He says that very forcefully. Determined to get his way. HIS way, or the highway, as the saying goes.
     "Then where are you going to stay?"
     There's a pause that goes on for so long I actually start to hear crickets. And then he says: "What?"
     "If you're not staying at the Motel 6 with us, then where are you going to stay?"
     His eyes start to bulge out a little more. He hadn't thought about this part of the equation. He wants to tell me something, but he doesn't know what. His eyes bulge out in direct proportion with his desire to tell me something.
     "I... I..." he stammers, and then starts looking around for my wife.
     Well, to make a long story short, my wife had already made a nice reservation for us at a very nice four-star hotel. I'd tell you where we stayed, but since they didn't give me the Senior Citizen Discount, I won't. They told me that, even though my almost hundred-year-old father is STAYING with us, since he's not PAYING for us, we didn't qualify.
     "You hear that, Dad?" I asked him in front of the clerk. "You don't want to pay for the room, so we can get the Senior Citizen Discount?"
     "What?" my Dad said, and then started fiddling with his hearing aid.
     Like I said, nothing but the best for my Dad, as long as I'm paying.
     Meanwhile, I go ahead and pay THE FULL AMOUNT, and we go to our room. That's right, you heard me correctly. Room. Singular. With double-beds. We have to get a single room, because we need to keep an eye on my Dad. We don't want him to wander off for a soda at the end of the hall and not find his way back.
     There's a comedian, Mike Birbiglia, and he suffers from a sleeping disorder. His body doesn't produce the enzyme or hormone or chemical that keeps you immobile when you sleep, so, when he dreams, he gets up and acts out his dreams. He has to sleep in a sleeping bag that's zipped up from the inside, and he wears cooking mittens on his hands so he doesn't unzip it. It keeps him from killing himself in his sleep. It must be horrible to live that way, but it gives him great material for his comedy act.
     The reason I mention him is, I think, when you get older, your body stops producing that enzyme, hormone, or chemical and you find yourself off and doing things you shouldn't do--like going down the hall for a soda--only you're awake when you do it. That's because, when you get older, your body also stops producing the enzyme, hormone, or chemical that helps you to fall asleep. That's why...
     In the hotel room, my Dad gets up at 2300 hours (that's 11pm, for all you non-military types). I say "gets" up and not "wakes" up, because the only time I'm sure he's asleep is when he's sitting in front of the TV in his--my--favorite chair in the great room and there's something else I really want to see besides the baseball channel he's so fond of. He gets up, goes into the bathroom, and he stays in there for two hours making all kinds of racket. I don't know what he's doing, and I don't want to know what he's doing. I'm just hoping he's done doing it some time soon.
     Of course, I could ask him what he's doing, but I don't want to spend the rest of the night listening to him explaining it to me. I need my beauty sleep. Or so my wife tells me. Speaking of my wife...
     She also doesn't want to know what he's doing. Since we can clearly hear him, she doesn't get up to check up on him, and, more importantly, she doesn't try to get me to get up and check on him.
     Eventually--and I mean e-v-e-n-t-u-a-l-l-y--he finds his way back to bed.
 
 

Raising My Father

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Dad's Luggage (Part Two)

My wife packs all of my father's stuff the night before we leave. She's good that way. She'll pack the stuff he needs, the stuff he wants, and the stuff he wants but doesn't need. She does an excellent job, too. It comes from her years as a Girl Scout.

     The next morning, just before we're supposed to leave for the airport, she has one of her "feelings" and rechecks his luggage. His luggage is right where she left it on the floor, so there's no reason to be suspicious of anything, but... well... it's my Dad.
     She plops the largest of the suitcases on the bed, opens it, and finds this and that missing. More of this than that, but that's neither here nor there.

     Gone are his sunglasses, his reading glasses, his shaving equipment, his belts, etc.
     Etc. etc. etc.
     On and on and on.
     For reasons known only to my Dad, God, and John Edwards, he pulled stuff out of his suit case last night, some time after my wife had just finished packing it. Now, why would my Dad lug his suitcase back onto his bed, open it, empty it of stuff he needed for the trip, close it, and then put it right back where it had been? My wife didn't know, and she didn't want to know, so she just repacks everything without saying a word. If she made the mistake of engaging him in conversation, we'd probably end up missing our flight. Her only mistake was not getting me to carry it into our house out of his reach when she was done.
     Meanwhile, my Dad is all underfoot.
     He was up early, was wandering from room to room, and is now waiting in the kitchen for my wife to make his morning cup of tea. He doesn't care that she's busy, he wants his tea. I hope, when I get older, that I don't stop doing things for myself.
     Unfortunately for him, it's me who walks into the kitchen first. I start to make myself a cup of coffee.
     "Dad," I tell him. "Would you like a cup of tea?"
     Hey, I'm not completely heartless.
     My Dad just sits there at the kitchen counter and doesn't say anything. He looks at me with his big eyes bulging out from the pressure of either waiting for me to ask him again or waiting for me to do it without any prompting from him.
     Then again, his eyes could be bulging out because he's trying to control me with his geriatric mind powers. I've seen it happen. In the movies.
     "Dad," I ask him again, "would you like me to make you a cup of tea?"
     "No, no," he says. "I'm fine."
     "But don't you have a cup of tea every morning?"
     "Yes."
     "Wouldn't you like one this morning?"
     "Yes."
     "Well, then, I'll make it for you."
     "No, no. I'm fine, I'm fine."
     I make him his tea anyway, because I know what he's waiting for. He's waiting for my wife to come into the kitchen and make it for him. The problem is, my wife is busy in his little father-in-law house in front of our property repacking his suitcase.
     It's no problem, really. I grab a teabag, steep it in a cup of hot water for three minutes, and place the cup in front of my Dad. He doesn't add any sugar or honey, so I don't know how my wife can make it better, but apparently she does.
     "Here," I tell him. "Drink up, because we have to leave for the airport in a little while."
     My dad doesn't say anything. No "Thank you." No "Screw you." No "Why are we going to the airport?" He takes a sip of his tea, and then asks me, "Where's your wife?"
     "She's busy, Dad," I tell him.
     "Doing what?" and he takes another sip.
     "She's repacking your suitcase."
     Why lie, I figure.
     "Why would she do that?" he asks, innocently.
     I stand there and seriously consider asking him why he unpacked his suitcase. Not just to be a jerk, but because I really want to know. The only problem is I don't have time to listen to his explanation.
     "She wanted to make sure you have everything you need," I tell him, and he seems satisfied with my answer.
     He takes another sip of tea.
     Meanwhile, I take my and my wife's luggage to the car and pack it in the trunk. My Dad is still sitting at the kitchen counter enjoying his tea. I go get my Dad's luggage and pack it in the car. My Dad is still sitting at the kitchen counter enjoying his tea. My wife and I go through the house making sure everything's locked and put away. We turn off what's supposed to be turned off and turn on what's supposed to be turned on. My Dad is still sitting at the kitchen counter enjoying his tea. I look at my watch.
     Man, we really have to leave right now if we want to get to the airport in time. My wife agrees, because I can see her pointing sternly to her wristwatch. It's my job to get my Dad. He doesn't listen to my wife because, well, she's a girl. My Dad is old-school that way. My wife doesn't feel bad, because my Dad doesn't really listen to me, either.
     I go into the kitchen to get my Dad, only... there's no Dad. I look in the great room where he's usually sitting, but he's not there either.
     "Sweetie," I'm embarrassed to ask, "have you seen my Dad?"
     "Isn't he there?" she asks me back.
     "No. Isn't he with you?"
     "No. Isn't he with you?"
     I'm sure the same thing goes though both of our minds, but neither of us want to say it. We're both thinking he's gone on his morning walk without telling either of us, and when he's gone, sometimes he's gone for a long, long time. When he gets back, he'll be tired and sweaty and want to take a shower.
     "Let me check in his house," my wife tells me.
     We both go there.
     No Dad.
     Man, I think to myself, if we have to drive around searching for my father there's no way we'll make the airport in time.
     "What choice do we have?" my wife says, reading my mind. I'm sure she's just as pissed off as I am at my Dad, but neither of us say anything. If there's one thing you learn when you're a mother, it's how to store your anger so you can take it out on your husband later.
     She walks to the car, and I go to lock the back door of our house.
     "Honey!" I hear her calling from the driveway. "Honey!"
     "Shoot!" I think to myself (only I don't think, 'shoot'). "What now?"
     I rush over to the car, and my wife is standing on the outside of the passenger side. She nods her head toward the car, indicating she wants me to look inside, so I do. And there's my Dad. Already sitting inside the car.
     Waiting for us.
 
 

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