Windmills

I don't know how my dad knows, but he does.

     Yesterday, he was in his room all morning long but somehow, as soon as my grandson made himself comfortable in the great room and turned the TV on, he sensed a disturbance in The Force, and walked out.
     How? How does he know when someone else is enjoying the TV?
     Who knows? Certainly not me.
     If I was sitting in front of the set and my wife were nearby, I'd let him have a seat in his--my--favorite chair and take control of the remote control. Not that my father would make a fuss if he didn't get his way. He'd huff and puff and grunt and groan, but he wouldn't complain. He'd let his body's various exclamations do the complaining for him.
     But when it's his great-grandson who's sitting in front of the set, my father will keep his audible gripings to a minimum, because he knows that I won't tell my grandson anything and neither will his biggest fan, his daughter-in-law. My grandson is allowed to watch the alpha TV for as long as he wants to watch it. My Dad and I are big boys, we can fend for ourselves. If my father can make sacrifices for the world during World War Two, then he can a few sacrifices for his great-grandson.
     And he does.
      After an hour's worth of cartoon-watching, my grandson needed some physical stimulation and left the great room for the great outdoors, or as much of the great outdoors that can be contained in our backyard.

     "Hmm..." I thought to myself, "this would be a good time for me to buff the great room."
     Well, I waited for fifteen minutes, fully expecting my father to go back to his room, but no. My father continued to sit there and watch cartoons.
     I was never a Navy SEAL, but I saw the movie with Charlie Sheen, so that was enough training for me to understand that I need to adapt to changing or unchanging conditions, so I decided to buff the entryway instead.
     The fact is, I had already buffed the entryway last week, but I figure if I do it again, the noise will chase him away. He won't be able to hear the cartoon characters talk or himself think and he would leave for the relative quiet of his room.
     It was a stand-off of stubborn proportions.
     The Immovable Object (my father) versus The Irresistible Force (me, at least according to my old girlfriends).
     Thirty minutes later, I'm still buffing the entryway and he's still watching cartoons.
     Now, I know my logic is flawless. He can't hear the TV because the buffer is just too darn loud. Many is the time when my lovely wife is in the mood to nag me, and I'll respectfully begin to buff the floors just to drown her out.
     "I CAN'T HEAR YOU, HONEY!" I'll shout, pointing to the machine and then my ears.
     Now that I think about it, however, maybe my wife begins to nag me when she wants the floors buffed and wants it to be my idea.  She's devilishly devious, that woman.
     But my Dad, I don't know if the cartoon is that good or he's just that determined to be in the way. When I was a kid, I used to wake up early every Saturday morning to watch those classic cartoons  of my youth like Space Ghost and Frankenstein Jr. or The Banana Splits, so I understand how a good cartoon can make you tune out the world of bed-making and grass-cutting, but even as a kid I understood the importance of hearing the cartoons I was watching, so I continued to buff. I even buffed the entry into the Great Room--vroom, vroom, vroom!--but it didn't work.
     Nothing worked.
     He just continued to sit in his favorite chair and watch SpongeBob SillyPants.
     "It's not a contest," I had to remind myself. "It's not a contest."
     But if it was...
     Needless to say, I lost.

     So this morning, as soon as my father went to his room to take his morning nap, I jumped on the buffer. My wife and I had places to go and things to do, and I wanted to finish the floors before we left.     Buffing the floors may sound like pretty hard work, but it's not. I direct the buffer and it buff's. Easy-peasy. Ten minutes after I started, my father walked in. (See what I mean? How does he know?) He stopped by the kitchen entrance and looked from me to the TV and back to me, his eyes bugging out in consternation.
     He stood there, mumbled something that I was probably better off not understanding, and then decided to walk in. He walked to his favorite chair and sat. I continued buffing. To save my rapidly deteriorating hearing I wear ear protectors. They eliminate loud noises completely.
     Recently, when I made the mistake of jokingly putting them on while my wife was talking to me, sadly, the joke backfired. There was no gourmet morning coffee for me the next morning and for many mornings after that.
     Anyway, a few minutes later my wife walked in and turned the TV on for him. Why my father wants to watch TV while I'm polishing the floor, I have no idea. Especially since he has a perfectly good TV in his perfectly quiet room. I know in the great room with me working, he can't hear the TV no matter how loud my wife sets it. Heck, he doesn't even hear it half the time when it's quiet, The only time my father's hearing seems to work is when I'm upstairs whispering sweet nothings to my wife.
     "Quit talking so loud!" he'll yell from where he sits. "I can't hear The Price Is Right!"
     Oh sure, then he can hear, and my sweet nothings turn into nothing nothings.
     So, for the next thirty minutes I worked my way from the kitchen to the great room to the hall and back to the kitchen. If you're thinking I was trying to chase him away... well, you'd be right. I can't do a good job in the great room with him underfoot and I hate buffing the floors a few square feet at a time, so...
     ...vroooooooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
     I had the buffer just a few feet from him but nothing. Still he sat there. Watching TV. He acted like I wasn't even in the room. I actually buffed the floor for an extra fifteen minutes just out of orneriness.
     Dang!
     He won again.
     I finished, put the equipment away and went upstairs. Five minutes later, I came back downstairs and found him gone. The lights were on, the TV was on, but my Dad was MIA. With no windmills to tilt at, what's the point? I went back upstairs.
     Much later in the afternoon--not still dusk, not quite night--I walk into the great room. All the drapes are shut, the lights are off, and the TV is off. It's dark in there. As I walk into the kitchen I catch a movement inside the great room. With my superior Charlie Sheen-like reflexes, I turn, ready for anything. and find my father sitting in the darkness.
     "Is he alive?" I wonder to myself?
     Out loud, I ask, "What are you doing, Dad?

     My father answers, "I'm waiting for the game."

     Hmm... does he think the lights or TV come on by themselves?
     "Okay, Dad," I tell him. "Do you need anything?"
     "No," he says.

     I walk into the kitchen, get my drink, and leave.

 

 

Raising My Father

RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com

jimduchene.blogspot.com  American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene

 

When God Takes Me

Yesterday, my father had been napping in his --my--favorite chair in the great room for over thirty minutes. He was busy trying to figure out what he was watching on TV when he nodded off.
     It was The Price Is Right, for your information. The Price Is Right is one of the rare shows on TV that I'll watch with my father because I happen to think the models who point at this and point at that should be the prizes.
     But don't tell my wife.
     My father's television watching usually goes like this: He walks in, sits down, and waits for someone--usually my wife--to turn on the TV for him. As soon as the TV light comes on, my father's lights go out.
     "Are you asleep, Dad?" I'll ask him, just to make sure he's still alive.
     "Snore!" he'll answer. 
     I was in the kitchen reading a magazine when he woke up.
     "Ohhhhhhh!" I heard him say.
     I looked up and over at him. When he saw me, he laughed.
     "I'm so tired I could fall asleep," he told me.
     "You should go to bed, Dad."
     "I know that," he said.
     True to his word, two minutes later he was back in a geriatric type of suspended animation, and still in his favorite chair. Maybe I should have considered myself lucky because, when he's awake, he's always complaining about his various aches and pains.
     "Maybe it's because you sleep in that chair instead of your bed," I tell him.
     "That's what I was thinking," he'll tell me, but he won't do anything about it.

     This is one of the funny things about living with my elderly father, when my wife or I tell him something, even if he doesn't understand what we're talking about, he'll answer, "Yeah, I thought so."
     Or "I know."
     Or "I knew that."
     Or "That's what I was thinking."
     But it's usually: "Yeah, I thought so."

     "Dad, the division of everything in nature into the four elemental components is one of the most ancient scientific disciplines."
     "Yeah, I thought so."

     "On a philosophical or metaphysical level, the elements are generally accepted to represent the following qualities: fire, air, earth, and water."
     "I know."

     "In fact, the science of Numerology incorporates the philosophy of elementals."
     "I knew that."
     "And the single digits 1 through 9 and the Master Numbers 11 and 22 are divided into groups of three to an element.
     "That's what I was thinking."
     "These groups are called the Numerological Trinities."
     "What's for lunch?"

     When walking to my bed for a nap becomes too much of a chore for me or sleeping 22 hours a day becomes not enough rest for me or my next bowel movement becomes the only concern for me, I hope soon after that I'll be going to visit my parents in the Great great room in the sky, because when I look at my father today, I know I'm looking at myself tomorrow. I realize that his present is my future. The only difference might be that I'll be sleeping in front of a hologram of my favorite game show, rather than a television screen.
     When I first asked my father to move in with us, I didn't realize just how much his life would affects my life. I didn't realize that how he lives will affect how me and my family live. It affects our lives 100%, because our lives have to be lived around his. There is nothing we do that we don't have to take my father into consideration for. We have become servants and slaves to a 96-year-old man.

     I have a friend who's in the same boat. His mother is the willing prisoner of her bedroom. She used to wake up early in the morning, fix breakfast, get her cleaning done, and be busy all day long fussing with her kids. But then she got older, and so did her kids, and, eventually, so did her grandkids. Toss in a few great-grandkids and you'll have an idea of just how old she is.
     Now she sleeps.
     All day long.
     That's all she does.
     I told him, "Your mother has the same schedule as the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz."
 

"We get up at noon,

and go to work at one.

Take an hour lunch,

And then by two we're done.

Jolly old fun!"

 
     I hope I don't live that long.

     If I can still get around when I'm old, if I can still eat and get rid of what I eat, then maybe I wouldn't mind hanging in there a little longer. But if I can't, then what would be the point of my putting my family's lives in limbo?
     No, when God takes me, I hope He takes me just before I want Him to. And painlessly.

     Mainly painlessly.
 
 

Raising My Father

RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com

jimduchene.BlogSpot.com  American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene

 

I'll Mail It To You

My wife loves me.

     I know this without a doubt.

     We've been married too many years for me to mention because it might give you an idea of how old she is. We've had kids and grandkids, houses and homes, and moved from here to there. Mainly there. But who does she ask first when she's offering pie?

     You guessed it.

     My father.

     "Dad," she says, making her first mistake "do you want some pie?"

     I say it's a mistake, because instead of just bringing him a slice of pie, which he would then enthusiastically consume without complaint, she tries to engage him in conversation and give him a choice, which she feels is important for him.

     I've found it's better to just say, "Here's some pie, Dad," and then hand him his plate.

     If you hand my father anything, he'll take it.

     Especially if it's a plate of food.

     Or money.

     But...

     If you give him a choice...

     He'll answer, "What?"

     Or, "Who?"

     Or "Where?"

     Or "When?"

     Or "Why?"

     My father. He would have made a good newspaper reporter. In the meantime...

     "Mumble, mumble, mumble," he says, which is also another way he tends to answer.

     "Do you want some apple pie?" my wife patiently asks him again.

     "Hmmm..." he says. "Apple pie... " he considers. And then, "What about apple pie?"

     "Do you want me to serve you some apple pie?" my wife bravely continues forward.

     "Hmmm..." my father considers once again, and then it ends quickly, more quickly than the two of us are used to.

     I look at my wife.

     My wife looks at me.

     "What?" her eyes say.

     "Who? Where? When? Why?" my eyes respond.

     "No," my father tells her. "I'm full."

     "Are you sure, Dad?" my wife clarifies, looking for closure.

     "Honey," I've told her in the past, "there's no such thing as closure. Especially with my Dad." But she never listens.

     "Are you sure you don't want some pie?"

     "You served me too much breakfast," he tells her in a way that sounds like a chastisement. "You always serve me too much mumble, mumble, mumble."

     Fortunately, we can't make out the last part of his sentence because I'm sure it didn't end with, "Thank you."

     I walk into the kitchen a little later, just minding my own business, when--no more pie for me!

     I caught the old timer eating pie right out of the pie plate!

     I've told my wife (and I've told her and told her), "Don't leave anything I might want to eat on the counter where my father can get to it."

     She says she won't, but she'll do it anyway. I think she does it on purpose. It's her way of keeping me on my doctor's diet.

     Now why, why am I such a jerk that I don't want anything I might eat to be within a silly little millimeter's reach of my father?

     Because my father coughs.

     And he sneezes.

     And he blows his nose.

     And he doesn't care where he does these things. And he doesn't care to cover his mouth when he does these things. It must be an evolutionary thing. He may do it to mark his territory.

     "This is my food! And no one had better eat it!"

     You see, back in our caveman days, the only way the elderly cavemen would have something to eat at the end of a busy day of hunting and gathering, was by grossing out all the younger, stronger cavemen. Once a caveman was too old to hunt or to gather,* the only way for him to survive was to put boogers on anything worth eating. Which reminds me...

     For some reason, my father also likes to lean over and smell any food that's on the kitchen counter. Any food that he's considering helping himself to, which is ALL the food. Even food he's not sure about, he'll lean over and take a whiff. He'll then weigh the pros and the cons, the goods and the bads, the Simons and the Garfunkels. The problem with all this smelling of food is there's always a little drop of nostril-juice hanging precariously to the tip of his nose, constantly threatening to fall off. Why he feels the need to get his nose within dripping distance of my food, I have no idea. Wait a minute...

     My father sees me.

     This time, he does the polite thing. He puts down the spoon he's been caught gobbling the pie with, takes out his handkerchief--the dirty one he hasn't washed since the great war--and blows his nose. Done, he puts the handkerchief back into his front pocket.

     "You want some pie?" he asks me.

     I've noticed that he hasn't bothered to wash his hands.

     "No, thanks, dad," I tell him. No more pie for this guy. Ever.

     If you're hungry, send me your address.

     I'll mail it to you.

 

 

Raising My Father

RaisingMyFather.BlogSpot.com

jimduchene.BlogSpot.com  American Chimpanzee

@JimDuchene

   
* If I were a caveman, I might have pretended to not be able to hunt or gather, but that would only be so I could stay back and have all the lonely cavewomen to myself.