The Duke of Edinburg

Yesterday, I arrived to find Dad, in his words, “hysterical.” Dad’s hysterical is rather understated, but he was definitely worried. Apparently the dentist’s office called to confirm his appointment and woke him up. He groggily told them he’d be there and then when he woke up, he was alarmed because he thought he’d made an appointment without checking to see if Marie or I could take him. It took quite a bit of reassurance before I could convince him that Marie was actually the one who made the appointment, so she’s definitely available.

Today he’s in better spirits, smoking a cigar at the counter. He says to me, “I would nominate you for man of the century.” All I did to earn this accolade was serve him a glass of coca-cola and a piece of carrot cake.

Dad washed the dishes, but instead of putting them in the dish drainer, to the right, he piled them all on the stove, to the left. He can’t remember simple things like that, but today he told us, accurately, the populations of China and India. Alzheimer’s is so quixotic.

When Kate S. and I got ready to give Dad his bath, something went wrong with the faucet and we couldn’t turn the water off. There we were, two hefty queer women and a naked octogenarian, crammed into a manhattan bathroom, fiddling with the faucet. Eventually, Kate S. sent me for the screwdriver and managed to repair it.

When it comes to baths, Dad prefers duration to frequency. He likes to soak in hot water for hours, refilling the water as it cools off, but only believes in bathing twice a week, unless, as he explains to us, “I’m going to sit next to the Duke of Edinburg.”

“One of the things I like most about you is the fact that you’re not afraid of all kinds of strange cookery,” said Dad while spooning down tonight’s dessert – chocolate crepes filled with ice cream. From him, I think that was a compliment. He called the crepe he was eating “a thin fabric,” which makes me wonder if, in some part of his brain, he knows that crepe is also a type of material.

“You do more god-damn things for people than five other people,” says Dad, watching me clean up his apartment after dinner. He’s gotten ice cream between the floorboards. I don’t think that’s ever coming out. Maybe we should have given him dessert before the bath.

Dad quote of the night: “I have never been normal. Never, ever been normal.”