Father’s Day
We never celebrated
Father’s Day in my family (or Mother’s Day). We thought of them as “Hallmark
Holidays”, invented to sell greeting cards. Besides, every day is Father’s Day,
right? My widowed dad is 88, and
getting frail, though, so there aren’t many more occasions to celebrate. I
drove down to Niagara to Serenity Towers on a fine Sunday, and arrived a bit
late due to construction on the QEW.
He’d been up for my
scheduled arrival time, but couldn’t last the extra 10 minutes, and had gone
back to his bed. He spends most of his time there. Youngest sister was waiting
with him, patiently. These visits are breaks in my routine, for youngest
sister, they ARE routine.
We shuffled off to the
elevator and downstairs. Youngest sister wanted to show me dad’s latest
acquisition - a scooter, the biggest and shiniest one in the scooter garage. He
was renting it for $5 a day, and had been out on it once. Although large and safe,
it looked to me to be a bit of a handful for an elderly man on a crowded
sidewalk. It’s necessary, though, dad is far beyond driving his own car
anymore.
Youngest sister says
she has been out on one tour through a local park with dad on the scooter, and
hopes to go out on more, but I have my doubts. This might be like his sailboat,
his cabin cruiser and his chainsaw - wonderful to own, but seldom, if ever
used.
We bundled into his
car and youngest sister drove the short distance to a rib-joint in a strip mall
that dad, unaccountably, likes. They have little glasses of beer, about as much
as he can drink, and a child’s menu, which he can’t finish. The waitresses are
good with him.
He is VERY frail, just
a wisp of an old man. Where was the tall, arrogant, outgoing, overbearing man
who bedeviled my attempts to connect with my father? Dad just sat there,
smiling weakly, but happily, watching youngest sister and I talk about politics
and the Olympics without hearing anything or taking anything in. He seems happy
to be out, happy to see us, but there’s not much there.
The only time he
rouses himself to show any emotion is to complain at the loudness of a pair of
motorcycles going by, at the deviltry of his insurance company in the Maritimes
and at the exorbitant cost of a $2 glass of beer.
I’m buying a new boat,
a big one. The kind of solid, honest North Sea motorsailer that dad used to
sketch on restaurant placemats for us all the time. The kind of boat he always
wanted to own. I take delivery just before his birthday in August. I want him
to stay with us, mentally and in the flesh, until then, because I plan to motor
over to Niagara and take him out for a cruise. It will probably be the last
trip he takes, if we can even get him on the boat, but it will be worth it.
I hope he lasts until
then.
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