Slime

“So many of these things have one slime and that’s that, but this has a wacko wacko wacko and then smooth. There’s the hard hard part and the salad. This is real contrast,” Dad says happily, eating his dessert. He’s talking about the dessert I made, a chocolate blueberry bread pudding, and how he enjoys the difference between the hard outer edges and the spongy middle. This is a recurring theme for him – earlier in the meal, he was enjoying the contrast between the phyllo (“thin, thin, sharp”) and the “slime,” the filling of a spinach pie.

Dad’s being extra careful at the table these days – a couple of days ago he managed to knock over his drink twice in an hour and got so frustrated (“I was pissed pissed PISSED”) that he yelled cursewords so loudly that one of his neighbors asked me if he was all right in the hallway the next day so now he’s determined not to knock anything over.

Dad was in super-repeat mode today, and Brianna and I were about to lose it if he told us about being blind one more time, so, in desperation, I shoved a mixing bowl in front of him and commanded him to stir. Holding on to the bowl with one hand and stirring with the other kept him occupied enough that we got a whole ten minutes without hearing about blindness. Keeping him busy is good for us – and him. After dinner, he washed the dishes, handing them off to Kate S. “Here’s a well-washed dish” to dry and put away. “I’m glad I participated in a teeny-weeny bit,” he said, once they were done.

Dad was alone today when the groceries arrived and made it all the way down to let the guy in and back up. Luckily, he happened to be wearing clothes this time. “I thought I was going to be thrown out. I thought I was going to be kicked out. I thought he was going to fly off the handle. He had three boxes and I didn’t have any money – I had money, but I forgot.” Luckily, I came along and found them standing in the doorway in a state of confusion, tipped the guy, who was having a guilt attack over having an obviously ancient person come down all those stairs, reassured him, and sent him on his way. “Are 20 or 30 people coming for dinner?” inquired Dad. “Three boxes!” I tried to explain to him that the boxes don’t have that much inside, but he was still astonished.

Dad’s still struggling with gender. Aside from his never-ending attempts to get Brianna’s gender right, he called me a “strong little fellow” as I was packing up my bag to go. It was heavy, but his remark made me feel like a midget. And tonight he said, about Marie/Obama, “she does off and on things, but overall she’s a very good guy.”

I’m kind of angry at Mia, an old friend of the family who lives in the apartment upstairs from him when she’s in the US (she splits her time between here and Holland). They’ve been friends for at least 40 years, but she’s a decade or so younger. Her daughter is a year younger than I am and Franka and I often played together in Dad’s apartment. We never played upstairs in their apartment so looking back on it, Mia got a lot of free child care from Dad. Maybe a little offbeat childcare, though – I’ll never forget my mother’s shock when she arrived one day and we proudly showed off our newest creations – collages made out of cut up magazines Dad subscribed to – Smithsonian, Archaeology, and Penthouse!!! There were lots of animals – and all kinds of body parts. Dad kept those on his refrigerator for decades. I think he enjoyed the scandalous aspect.

Anyway, I ran into Mia, recently arrived from Holland, in the vestibule. “How’s Addison?” she asked. “Not too bad.” “And the Alzheimer’s?” “Holding steady.” “Are you sure? I heard him screaming the other day.” “Screaming?!” I search my mind for what she could mean, and then realize she means the tantrum. “You mean yelling curses? He was just upset because he can’t see and he kept spilling his drink.” “Can he still live here?” What is that supposed to mean? “Yes, he has his lady, and me on the weekends.” “He usually calls when I get into town. I don’t think he knows I’m here.” It’s impossible not to know she’s here – her footsteps on the ceiling are unmistakable. “He knows, he just doesn’t use the phone much. He can’t see the numbers too well, but people can call him.” “I’ll go visit him tomorrow,” she says, “in the morning, since you come later on.”

“He doesn’t get up until 11am these days,” I tell her. “But he always used to get up so early, 7am . . . “ Things change, I want to tell her. “Yes, he eats sugar now, too.” “Sugar!” she says. She’s always been health conscious, running around central park, and trying to convince people that a cold boiled sweet potato is a dessert. “He was always so careful about what he ate.” Dad wasn’t so much careful as just used to what happened to be a healthy diet. “Visiting him used to be such a pleasure, because he knew so much about history and things . . . “ she trails off, perhaps because of the flames that are shooting out of my ears. “Now he repeats so much,” She complains. “Distract him,” I tell her. “He likes to hear stories about stuff he did that he doesn’t remember.” And then I make a run for it “Ice cream’s melting, gotta go!” before I tell her she’s a selfish bitch who should visit Dad not because of the pleasure she gets from it (a pleasure that can still be found for those who know where to look, I would add), but because of the length of their relationship and the fact that you don’t abandon a friend just because he gets “dotty,” and because it would be a welcome distraction from his daily, boring routine . . . As far as the repeating, it’s not like we’re asking her to deal with it day in and day out, just a fucking hour or whatever. Where is her compassion?

I know she has always fought hard against her own ageing, dyes her hair, takes pleasure in looking younger than she is – and in picking up much younger men, who have no idea – but does this make it impossible for her to be present for a friend whose aging is obvious?

By the way, she didn't show up to visit.