Taking Dad Out to Lunch
So I made myself go over to my dad's apartment to get the duty-lunch over with this afternoon. I brought him a durian because he's mentioned them to me and I didn't know if he'd ever had one. Icky old-person smell of the apartment, and my usual dread of his physical presence. My dad is 92. He's becoming skinny and stringy and often has crumbs and stains on his clothes which I ignore because I don't want the kind of intimacy implied by pointing them out. My brothers can just tell him to change his shirt or brush his teeth; I can't. I took him to a sushi restaurant in town. He walks incredibly slowly but it's okay because I want to fill up the time. I encouraged him to talk about his old engineering firm. He told me that my brother James works for the CIA, which is untrue but he tends to confabulate these days, makes up stories to connect a few facts that he can't otherwise make sense of. He told me that "they investigated him for a year; they wouldn't do that unless it was for the CIA." Don't know where he got that idea either, although Jamie does work for a government agency.
After the sushi we headed back to his apartment. It was less than an hour after picking him up, so I suggested we stop in a park. There's a little town museum, and we walked around the herb garden there and looked at the plants and smelled them. The same old faint air of heartbreak for me, how sad that I am here with my old dad and trying not to get into that physical bubble around him that makes me queasy. Certainly not telling him anything about myself that would highlight his inability to be interested. I just keep it bland and I keep my inner self far away from the scene. We sang some Christmas carols while we walked around. He does that sometimes, just bursts out singing, because people have learned not to introduce topics around him.
Then brought him home, glad to see that I had expended an hour and a half on filial piety. Glad to back out the sliding glass doors and wave good-bye.
Back at James and Karen's, my other brother Happy had arrived and we shmoozed on the back deck a while, trading stories about growing up. Happy missed a bunch of stuff because he was youngest, but he says sometimes he thinks he missed out and sometimes that he was spared. He is different from me and James, more obdurately unserious, especially about himself. James and I have a neurosis about responsibility and doing your best. It's funny, because they remember things about me that I forget: "Remember how you sat crying in the fireplace?" No, I don't. I was the designated emoter. No room left there for Happy, so he sort of isolated himself, first into his own sci-fi world, then into a bong. No one took him seriously because the older two hogged all the seriousness.
Karen and I went shopping for a while. I tried on ten pairs of pants, but strangely, none of them make me look twenty pounds thinner or years younger. We consoled ourselves by bringing home Thai food.
After the sushi we headed back to his apartment. It was less than an hour after picking him up, so I suggested we stop in a park. There's a little town museum, and we walked around the herb garden there and looked at the plants and smelled them. The same old faint air of heartbreak for me, how sad that I am here with my old dad and trying not to get into that physical bubble around him that makes me queasy. Certainly not telling him anything about myself that would highlight his inability to be interested. I just keep it bland and I keep my inner self far away from the scene. We sang some Christmas carols while we walked around. He does that sometimes, just bursts out singing, because people have learned not to introduce topics around him.
Then brought him home, glad to see that I had expended an hour and a half on filial piety. Glad to back out the sliding glass doors and wave good-bye.
Back at James and Karen's, my other brother Happy had arrived and we shmoozed on the back deck a while, trading stories about growing up. Happy missed a bunch of stuff because he was youngest, but he says sometimes he thinks he missed out and sometimes that he was spared. He is different from me and James, more obdurately unserious, especially about himself. James and I have a neurosis about responsibility and doing your best. It's funny, because they remember things about me that I forget: "Remember how you sat crying in the fireplace?" No, I don't. I was the designated emoter. No room left there for Happy, so he sort of isolated himself, first into his own sci-fi world, then into a bong. No one took him seriously because the older two hogged all the seriousness.
Karen and I went shopping for a while. I tried on ten pairs of pants, but strangely, none of them make me look twenty pounds thinner or years younger. We consoled ourselves by bringing home Thai food.