ritzy snitzy

Dad and I are now listening to Ruth Reichl’s “Tender at the Bone,” but we only made it to the 3rd side of tape before the player went crazy and pulled all the tape out of the cassette. I tried to fix it, but it got to the same place and did it again, so I think I’ll have to dig out my copy of the book and read this part to him myself. I can’t remember if it was this book, or another Ruth Reichl book, that I read aloud to my mother as she was dying in the hospital.

On Sunday Dad and I made the trip out to East Flatbush to Kate S’s house for Brianna’s birthday celebration. Getting places with Dad always makes me feel like those frazzled parents you see in airports; there are so many odds and ends to remember - teeth, glasses, are his clothes right-side out? Do his socks match? Got teeth? Glasses? Wallet (his and mine)?, etc. - and watch out for and you can’t do anything fast. Plus, you have to make sure he pees before leaving, like a little kid. I guess I’m the right age for it – people I went to school with keep finding me on Facebook, and they all seem to have little kids. So, they have their little kids and I have Dad.

Coming back, we had a young, Caribbean driver who was playing his “Caribbean Fever” radio really loud. He heard Dad say something about it and wanted to know if the music was too loud, but Dad was just saying he liked it!

Dad on swine flu: “I hope I don’t get spanged by it.”

Dad was eating his dinner when I got here, a little after 6pm, but now it’s 9pm and he’s eyeing my black bean burrito, so I cut a piece off for him. Halfway through eating it, he asks “Did I eat at 6pm?” When I tell him he did, he takes a few more bites, and then says, “that’s enough for one day.” Marie-Jo, who is filling in for Marie while she’s on vacation, told me that she only puts one banana on the counter and keeps the bunch on top of the fridge, where Dad won’t find them, because he will eat them all at once.

“Good lord, you have a tough life, pulling stuff out of sandwiches all the time,” says Dad, listening to me complain about the hardships of vegetarianism in a City where people go around ruining perfectly good grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon.

“Your pants are inside out,” I tell Dad, observing that the fuzzy inside and the seams of his pants are on the outside. “REALLY?” he says as if it’s the most astonishing thing he’s ever heard. I have him feel both sides of the pants, and then he understands. Then he starts examining his outermost shirt, a striped t-shirt that he’s wearing on top of his sweater. “This has decorations on it,” “Yeah,” I say, “stripes.” “Pretty ritzy, snitzy,” he says.

“I’m still trying to get a bed for you,” says Dad, referring to the sofabed. “John’s coming to get the old one this weekend,” I tell him. “What’s his name?” Dad wants to know. “John. John Henry.” “That’s a classic name,” says Dad.

The cat walks over and stands by Dad’s legs. “Hello, kitty cat,” he says in a high-pitched falsetto. The cat sits between his feet. Dad looks around. “I don’t know where it is,” he says to me. “Where what is?” “The cat.” I take his hand and guide it to the cat.

“My boss is very strange,” Dad says. “For one thing she makes a hell of a lot of noise. Just banging around, loud talk, slamming things.” He must mean Marie-Jo, I think, though she always seemed pretty quiet to me. “I think she’s kind of a compulsive, because today or was it yesterday, she made an awful lot of noise. And today she came in, put the thing down there, and down there, and down there, two or three minutes, and then she tore out. This time she had a huge bag of clothes, I think she said she was going to clean them. She was in a hellish hurry anyway.” I think it's pretty funny that he considers his employees his boss, but I guess it makes sense in a way - they tell him when to eat, what to wear, when to bathe . . .

Allergic to me?

As soon as I walk in, Dad tells me that someone called him, but can’t tell me who. After a lot of guesswork, I finally figure out that it was his friend Peter. Talking to Peter has gotten Dad thinking about his memory loss. He says “I think it was probably the outstanding conversation of the god-damn world. I just could not believe it that I knew all these people. He named a dozen people so it’s somehow a wonder to me that all these names came up or occurred and they were forgotten and I knew all kinds of people and people and people and I don’t know their names any more. All these people from way back, 50 years ago, I wonder if it’s had any, there must have been a lot of people who abandoned me or I abandoned them because I didn’t remember the names and I didn’t want to embarrass myself.”

Dad continued describing the conversation as it dawned on Peter that Dad doesn’t remember any of their mutual friends. “He was quite upset after about 20 minutes. I said ‘well, I’ve forgotten a lot of people.’ He said ‘You’re rather unique. Most people are completely dumbfounded and don’t know anything and wind up in a place where they won’t be bothered.’”

A while later, he asks “Will I be a different person?” and when I ask what he means, it turns out that he’s still thinking about the dementia. He says, “Is there any percentage of people who don’t know one end from the other?” “People who can’t remember things?” I ask. “Yes.” “Several million in the US.” I reply. “And I’m one of them and I didn’t realize it until today. I don’t know how I managed to avoid all that,” he says. I don’t bother trying to explain that it’s the nature of the illness.

The cat is sitting on Dad’s lap. “What’s that water running for?” he asks me. “She’s making you tea,” I tell him. “Guess we’re going to get some tea,” he says to the cat. “Would you like some tea?” The cat doesn’t answer.

“What’s guacamole?” asks Dad. “It’s kind of a paste made out of avocados.” “Paste?!” says Dad, undoubtedly thinking of glue. “They smash up the avocados with seasoning and stuff,” I explain.

We’re discussing Dad’s cat and suddenly he says, “I wonder if she’s ever fucked?” I’m startled by the question, but just tell him I don’t know.

“You’re sneezing,” Dad says, “Think you got a cold coming over?” “No, I’m allergic to something,” I tell him. “Allergic to me?” he asks. “No, I think it’s the plants outside.”

weird weird weird dream

Dad’s still shaken by last night’s hallucination. He says: “Last night I had a very weird weird weird dream that went on and on and on. I had houses that went on and on all around and when I wanted to be myself I couldn’t find my home, but there I was right in the middle of where I’ve always been. Everything was foreign, it was all different, all I was standing on was what I was standing on and all around was foreign things. I don’t know why I’m confessing all this.”

“A lot of people talk about their dreams,” I tell him. “I think a lot of people are scared of their dreams. It’s the wildest, weirdest dream I ever had. All the houses were brick without a single brick missing.” “You woke up eventually,” I remind him, trying to get him to realize that it’s over. “I woke up? I finally came to but I wasn’t awake. I went from one room to the other, back and forth, I could feel it, but I couldn’t see it. Weird. Weird. Weird. In fact, I’m kind of scared of it. It was all all all bricks and stone and everything was screwed up nothing was regular but everyplace was completely done, there was not a brick out of place ever. Finally I said ‘gee whiz where am I?’ and I was scared to death. I could see right through everything that I was feeling, that was the weird part of it. I’m almost scared to go to bed tonight. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

After a pause, he says, “What I think is I’m going back into things I never dared go into before. After you left, I was lost,” “I know you were seeing the houses before I left,” I say. “That’s the trouble, I was seeing them too much.”

“At one point he was asking me questions and questions and questions,” Dad says. “Charlie was?” I’m not sure what we’re talking about. “Charlie Burgess was, and he was smiling.” “You thought Charlie was here in the house asking questions?” “No, he didn’t appear in this thing at all. He was somewhere else. This thing was very strange, very hilly, no streets but walls, walls, walls, everywhere was a wall.” We’re back to this again.

“Those remind me of the stone walls in Gloucester that mark off the edges of the property,” I say. Dad replies “I think I’ve wiped Gloucester off the map. We were going to go and check up on what I owned and what I didn’t own but we never got to it at all. I don’t remember the following trip at all.” “We went there for your birthday in August,” I remind him. “You and I and?” he asks. “Kate,” I say, filling in the blank. “I don’t remember a damn thing about it at all. I tell you, when you get to be my age you run into all kinds of crazy things. But they never seem to be dangerous. And you never saw anyone else. Just walls, walls, walls, crazy looking but they were always peaceful and you never saw a person, no one, just houses, houses, houses. The moment you left I was scared, really scared, but then I calmed down and began to see the apartment and walked from one room to another but still you could see these houses all around.”

“But no snakes?” I ask, thinking of the other day. “No any other animal at all, nothing. Just houses and houses and walls and walls and crooked walls. You could look anywhere and see houses but they never got above the first floor. I’m kind of anxious to see what comes next.”

“I smell the oil from the oil truck outside,” I say, trying for a distraction. “I think my smelling apparatus is dead.” he says. “It seemed to me you had four or five books and a strap around them, that’s all, and we were talking and talking and talking and then you went and then all these strange buildings and I just sat there for a while and finally the real house that I lived in began to come out.”

Snarling Snakes

Even with his language problems, Dad still uses the word “defenestrate” in conversation, talking to Kate S. on the phone. They’re talking about cats, but Dad keeps getting confused, using the word “Kates” and “cats” interchangeably. All of a sudden, I hear him say, “how much do you weigh, or don’t you care?” to her. Apparently the idea of never asking a woman her weight has gone out the window, along with the idea of wearing pants to open the door.

“Kate wants two books,” I tell Dad. “They’re about vampires.” “I don’t think I like talking about vampires – ewww,” he says. I never knew Dad was squeamish about anything. When the sewer at the old house backed up into the garden, Dad would put on his Gloucester-fisherman hip-high boots and go shovel it up, and when cheese in the fridge grew green and fuzzy, Dad would just slice off the bad part and eat the rest. Apparently vampires get to him, but in true open-minded Unitarian style, he says “But if she likes vampires she can get vampires.”

Getting out a Good Humor bar for Dad, I notice the slogan on the box, “Brings back the Memories,” and start to laugh. If only . . .

Dad is pondering the ancient couch, which is really more of a daybed. “They lie on it and they’re more discomfortable when they lie on it than if they’d stayed off it. It’s older than the civil war,” he says. Our friend John, who lives in Gloucester in the house Dad grew up in, has agreed to drive down to NYC and take it back with him, thus clearing the way for the new sofabed. You can’t just throw out something that’s been around since before the civil war.

“You know what amazes me and bizarres me and crazies me?” Dad asks. “They have things in the middle of things. They can be handled and they can’t be handled and then they disappear. I can’t see anything there, but if I look long enough, I see a thing.” “What kind of thing?” I ask, confused. “A weird thing. I wonder what happened to it.” He peers into the empty space in the middle of the room. “Maybe I’m going crazy. Twenty minutes ago I looked and there was a whole picture with snakes and whatnot and it’s gone now. I don’t know where it went. There was a whole picture and it was snarling.”

Hallucinations, especially of snakes, are not a new symptom of Dad’s – they appeared pretty early on and were one of the things that prompted me to get the evaluation which led to his diagnosis. He used to say he saw snakes lying along his bookshelves, but it’s been years since we heard about the snakes. At the time, I wondered to what extent his failing vision and his developing dementia were intersecting to create the false images. I searched the medical literature, but only found one article on the subject. But, as his eye doctor theorizes when I talk to him about it, the optic nerves are part of the brain, and maybe there’s a sub-type of dementia where they fail first. I met someone the other day who told me their parent had a combination of blindness from “glaucoma” and Alzheimer’s, just like Dad. What if some people’s optic nerves are degenerating as part of a dementing illness, but they get lumped into the glaucoma category? Dad’s intraoptic pressure was below normal as a result of the glaucoma treatment, but still his vision deteriorated, frustrating his eye doctor tremendously.

While I’m typing this, a silence has fallen, which Dad breaks by leaning to one side and saying, in a strange voice, “Hello, hello, hello.” “Dad?” I ask “what are you doing?” “I’m talking to the cat,” he says. She’s across the room, not paying him any attention. I put a pillow in his lap and then the cat. They look very cute together.

The stuff that grows

Dad wants to know where I was last night. He’s a little confused because I had to leave his house suddenly to deal with a situation at the shelter. “I was at home last night,” I tell him. “You have a home, oh, good,” he says. “How are things down at the old hatch?”

Dad is feeling around the table when he encounters the xylophone. “That’s the baby,” he says “isn’t that the baby?” “That’s the xylophone,” I tell him. “I thought it was something grossly important,” he says.

He stumbles across his red plaid hat on the table and trades it for the baseball cap he was wearing. Holding the baseball cap, he says “I don’t know where the rest of the caps are.” “In the bedroom,” I say. “My knowledge, my education, my everything is falling away by the wayside,” he says, heading back there.

“I forgot where my pants are,” says Dad, who is wearing pants and plucking at the corduroy covering his legs. It turns out that he means his elderly denim pants, which appear to be precursors to modern jeans. He had them on yesterday, so I find them easily on the floor by his bed. “I’m going to change my pants,” he announces. “Feeling too warm?” I ask. I certainly would in corduroy pants in this weather. “No,” he says, “they’re fresh. I was going to put them on for celebration, but we celebrated and that’s that.” Dad returns after a long time, wearing nothing put his underwear. “I thought you were going to put on your pants,” I say inquiringly. “I can’t find them,” he says. “They’re on your bed.” He goes back to try again, and is gone even longer. I think about going to see if he needs help, but I don’t hear any cursing, so I wait. When he finally emerges, it turns out he put them on three different times – the first time he thought they were backwards and reversed them, only to find that then they really were backwards.

Dad is thinking about his cat. “She’s easy to spot because she has spots.” I put her in his lap, with a pillow between her claws and his thin pants. He says, petting her, “I suppose I’m not really engineered to keep nice kitty going, I’m still kind of strange to it.”

Dad is a few forkfuls into his dinner, when he pauses “You know what’s good about this? The stuff that grows.” I survey his plate – we’re having deconstructed tacos, with the ingredients served in salad form instead of in difficult-to-handle shells, dressed with lime juice and cumin. ‘The stuff that grows’ must refer to the lettuce, I think. After he’s done, “You know what, that’s one of the nicest small sessions I’ve ever had. Usually they give you too much, but this was just right.”

We listen to another disc of the ‘Tis book. After we’re done, Dad says, “I’m beginning to suspect that when I talk to that Irishman that it takes away a certain amount of – of what? Of everything, of what I’m saying. After a couple of hours of talking to him, I can’t see as much, I can’t talk as much. Why does it take away so much? It’s weird. I can’t understand it.” I try not to laugh out loud at the way Dad phrases it, making it sounds like Frank McCourt has been here chatting away.

Dad is lost in a story and I can’t figure it out. He says, “He takes a lot of time because he had a . . . I don’t know what to say – I can’t think of a lot of things I used to think of 5, 10, 15 years ago. I can’t think of the words. I can think of all the wrong words, that’s the weirdest part of it.” “That must be annoying,” I sympathize. “Yes, it is,” he says emphatically.

It’s time for a distraction, so I put Kate S. on the phone with him. “Oh, it’s you,” he says to her. “I imagine you have a hard time finding things to do because you’re just lying there, lying there, lying there.” Later he tells her “I’m not doing anything, I’m just sloping blah, blah, blah. I used to do more, but I don’t do it now.” As he’s getting off the phone he tells her, “Good luck, good luck, good luck. Help your shoe, your foot, get as good as it was before.”

“I’m afraid I’m getting a little dotty,” Dad says, “but I suppose if you’re 85 you have to expect something a little bad.”

“You know what’s troubling me?” he asks. “What?” “I can’t tell the difference between you and the other girl that’s in the hospital.” (he means Kate S.) I’m at a loss as to how to respond to this. Finally, I say, “she’s bigger than I am.” “That’s right,” he says, apparently satisfied.

Dad is relaxing after his dessert, vanilla ice cream with strawberries cooked in simple syrup and whipped cream. He lights his cigar, and starts talking. “I had a period when I was in my 30s, I was going to be a great writer. I wrote all of these short stories and sent them off, and they all said ‘do this, that and the other’ and I said ‘to hell with it.’ Yes, and I had about ¾ of a novel, in fact, I finished the novel and that wasn’t very good either so I junked the whole thing. One guy said ‘if you had started between 15 and 20 you might have been a great writer, but you have to start early.’” Then he snaps out of it for a minute. “ I’m doing a lot of confessing, aren’t I?” he asks, self-consciously.

“I probably feel like moving in, but all those cats, I don’t know,” says Dad, out of the blue. “You know your way around here really well,” I remind him, “at my house you’d be lost.” “How would you feel if I moved down to your place?” he asks. “I’d be OK with it.” “You don’t think I’d squash the cats?” “They’d learn to get out of the way.” “It would be like out in the wilderness for me because I’ve been in midtown Manhattan for 60 years. I don’t know 110th st., I’ve been very limited.” A call from an upset client interrupts this conversation.

After I get off the phone, we talk about work a little, and then he asks “Are you going to give it up?” “In a way,” I reply. “ If you go on a long trip to South America . . .” says Dad, trailing off. “I’m not going on a long trip to South America, that’s what you would do,” I say, laughing. “I guess so,” he says. “In fact, you’ve been on long trips to South America!”

something is wacky-poo

We spend most of the evening listening to Frank McCourt’s “’Tis” on CD. Dad’s old CD player has died but I figure out how to play the audio CDs on his TV.

When he’s had enough for the night, we sit and talk. “I want to try out a restaurant near your house,” I say to Dad, “it’s on 53rd st.” “I keep saying I’m on 30th st and yet it’s 55,” says Dad. “How the hell did it get like that?” “You must have stayed on 30th st sometime in the past but it still sticks,” I tell him, “brains are funny things.” “Yes, every once in a while something is wacky-poo and you can’t get rid of it,” he agrees. “Did I ever live on 30th st?” he asks. “If you did, it was before I was born,” I tell him.

“I had fun and your mom just didn’t pay much attention to you. I paid more attention to you than she did,” Dad tells me. He’s struggling to remember the time we spent together when I was a child. “I wonder what it is that kills so much of the things I did?” he asks. “You remember all kinds of things I barely remember. I spent a lot of time with you, you know that, and your mom was doing what?” “Working,” I tell him. “Typing.” “And what happened to her?” Here we go again. “She got sick with cancer.” “Now I remember that,” he says, “just barely remember it. How old were you when she died?” “Just out of college.” Dad seems to be interviewing me. “Where did you go to high school?” he asks. “Stuyvesant.” “That was a really good high school and you went to college?” “Yes, Hampshire, three years.” “Yes, I remember that. ‘ three years’, I said ‘she’s really good.’ Had the disease struck you by then?” “I hadn’t been diagnosed yet.” “But you had the problem for years years years and nobody knew what it was. Did it have any effect on your mentality or anything?” “No, I don’t think so.”

Dad’s in a talkative mood. “Every week you do the cooking, and you enjoy it, you enjoy all kinds of things. I don’t know anyone who enjoys all kinds of things like you. You don’t have to do them, you really enjoy them because you like to do it. You like to do a lot of things that people don’t want to bother with and you never complain about anything. I have never heard you complain about anything. You say ‘oh, well I’ll do that, I’ll do that, I’ll do that’ and you do it without any bother. I don’t recall, I cannot recall any instance when you complained about anything. I don’t believe you complained about much.” It’s true that I’m not a big complainer, and I certainly wouldn’t complain about anything I do for Dad.

Dad’s having trouble remembering Kate S. I’m trying to explain that I want to wait for her to get better before we go try the new restaurant near his house, but he’s having trouble thinking of who she is. I tell him about our Sunday dinners, but it doesn’t help. “I must do a lot of things and just trash them apart,” he says. I get Kate S. on the phone. They start discussing her bad leg. “A little trick and bing all of this is following. I never heard of such a thing.” Dad is constantly amazed that she hurt herself so badly just by tripping. “I’d go bugs if I had a month to lie down.”

“She has a cat to keep her company,” I tell her. “You’ve never been without a cat,” he says to me. “Except in college when I couldn’t and I had a rabbit instead.” “Yeah,” he says “but your real address was still . . . “ Even though he’s lost in the sentence, I know what he means. “I still had cats at home,” I fill in. “Yes.”

“How often do you take a bath?” This sudden question makes me laugh. “That’s an odd question,” Dad acknowledges. “Some people say they do it once a day but I don’t see the point of it unless they work in a mine or some dirty place like that. Very often I went two weeks, even, but, of course, it depends a lot on what you do. If you work in a mine, every day you have to clean up. But I’ve never worked in a mine.” “I bet you had to clean up a lot when you were cutting fish,” I offer. “When was I cutting fish?” “On the docks in Gloucester during World War II after you got thrown out of the army.” “I got thrown out of the army right away.”

Dad’s watching me type. “Boy, you sure do know how to work those fingers! Do you think you can go any faster?” I make an effort to speed up. “You’re going goddamn fast, I can tell.” I speed up some more. “Jesus Christ, you’re going right out! Whoo-whee! God, you’re going about ten times as fast as I would go. Wow.” By now I’m laughing too hard at our little game to keep it up.

“Are you writing anything in particular?” Dad wants to know. “ I’m writing about you.” Having made the decision to be open with him about it, I stick to it, even if it’s sometimes awkward. “ I always write about you. I have 63 articles about you.” “WHAT! Wow!” “They’re not long.” I read Dad the “Star Trek” entry. “Wow, Wow, Wow,” he says. “Wow. I don’t know what to say.”

He goes silent and the silence feels heavy, so I direct his attention to his Easter basket and unwrap a couple of candies for him. “Some of these are plain and some of them have a whole lot of things in them,” he says. “Most of them have big nuts and it takes ten, fifteen, twenty hours for some of them to dissolve. It’s great work. I never had candy as good as that. Never.” He’s eating mini-Snickers at the moment. They should hire him for an ad campaign.

Down to the Nothing

I made Dad an Easter Basket today. I’ve never made an easter basket before, but I thought that with his new-found sweettooth, Dad might appreciate one, and I was right. He’s very excited and immediately starts eating the candy. “Do we have to give the basket back?” he wants to know. As it happens, I have converted an antique basket that has been hanging around his apartment. “No, it belongs to you.”

Some of the candies are giving Dad’s 7 teeth a challenge. “Since I’m 185 years old, it’s no wonder that some of my teeth have gone to hell,” he informs me. “Maybe you should put in your teeth,” I suggest, but he declines.

With some effort, I get Dad started changing into the fresh clothes Marie has laid out for him. Partway into undressing he says, “Take off everything? Down to the nothing?” I tell him yes, and he gets out of the old clothes and into the new ones. As we’re leaving the building he says, “I should have taken my . . . they’re sliding.” Closer inspection reveals that the missing word is “belt” and that it’s his pants that are sliding, but not badly enough to make it worth going back upstairs.

We get a cab blessedly quickly, but Dad has developed the little-kid are-we-there-yet thing. Every 20 blocks or so, he says, “we must be nearly there,” and I have to explain that we’re going to East Flatbush, Brooklyn, and that we’re not even out of Manhattan yet.

Eventually, many questions later, we arrive at Kate S’s house. I head into the kitchen to prepare a kosher-for-passover easter dinner, while Briana surprises Dad with a genuine Jamaican ginger beer. Though it’s too strong for many novices, Dad finds it delicious and drinks the whole thing, adding to my theory that his taste buds are fading and that he mostly picks up strong flavors now.

I serve dinner and Dad is eating his matzoh ball soup. “This has great lumps in it!” he says. “Those are the matzoh balls, Dad.” “Oh.” On to the roasted potatoes with parmesan and rosemary from my garden. “I’ve never had this before, it’s sharp,” he says, meaning the hard edges.

On the way back, Dad somehow gets it into his head that he lives on 30th st. “Where are we going?” he asks me, when I tell the cab driver his address. “Your house.” “But I live on 30th st.” “You live on 55th St.” “How long have I lived there?” “Forty years, my whole lifetime.” “When did I live on 30th street?” “Maybe before I was born.” “I make a lot of mistakes. I’m getting cracky.”

He’s still dwelling on his “mistakes” when we get up to his apartment. “Kitty cat,” he addresses the cat, who having greeted us demanding dinner, is eating happily, “do you realize how smart you are? You’re smarter than I am now.”

“I wonder if that trip was worth it,” he says. “It was worth it because Kate S. had surgery and she’s stuck at home for a month and it was important for her to see us.” “I feel better now,” he says “I’ve been wondering why we went. Now I know.”

Our Lady

Dad is winding down a phone chat with Kate S. “Is there anything else you want to tell me? To confess to me? Do you want me to turn you over to our lady?” This mystical-sounding title refers to me and makes me feel like I should be the patron saint of something, like “Our Lady of the Vegetarian Kitchen.” Vegetarians could pray to me in that anxious moment when they’re going someplace and don’t know if there will be any vegetarian options.

I played some videos from the NY Times web site for Dad, and now he keeps asking me what station that was. I’ve been trying to explain that computers don’t have stations, exactly, but it’s a losing battle.

Dad is washing dishes and I hear his voice, “I don’t know where the god-damn soap is.” He’s not exactly talking to me, but rather to himself as he gropes around, but I go retrieve the soap and give it to him.

Marie called today, worried because when she gets here, Dad has often fixed himself a beverage, but he’s making strange concoctions, like coffee with orange juice instead of milk, or hot water with milk in it and no coffee powder. I tell her not to worry, that if these things taste OK to him and he’s not bothered by it, we should just go with the flow, but she’s a person who wants things to be done “right” and it won’t be easy for her to let go of that way of thinking.

She suggests that maybe we should hire another person – she’s less worried about the evenings, which have been bothering me, than about the mornings before she comes in. Her idea is that she could come in earlier, at 9am, so that she’s here for breakfast and coffee, and then she would leave earlier, and then her friend Mary could come give him dinner after she finishes her job nearby. It’s an idea.

Geezer

“The new fellow . . .” Dad starts a sentence and then peters out. “Brianna?” I suggest. “Brianna had to come here to piss and shit,” Dad says. “She came to take a shower,” I clarify. “Because the thing over there was blocked up,” he says. “They have no hot water,” I tell him. Somehow he has gotten the general idea – someone needed to use his bathroom because theirs wasn’t working- but the details are all mixed up.

Dad is smoking his customary after-dinner cigar. “Do you mind my smoking?” “No, my mother smoked my whole life so I’m used to it.” “Is she still alive?” he asks. “No.”

I put Dad on the phone with Kate S. He’s getting the hang of holding and talking into my cell phone. “I understand you’re going to be there for at least a month,” he says to her. “What are you going to do? You’ll go crazy!” I don’t catch what she tells him, but it must have to do with our visit on Sunday, because he asks “Where is your house? We’ll have to have evidence to somehow get there.” “We’ll take a taxi,” I tell him, resolving that worry.

Dad is watching me type again “I think you’re working your hands faster than they were a month ago. You know where all the letters are. I don’t think your hands can move any faster than they’re doing now, “ he says.

A postcard comes from Dad’s friend Peter. I read it to him. In the card, Peter refers to his own typing as “a particularly spastic case of geezer operating geezer typewriter.” Dad says, “what’s a geezer?” I explain that it’s a way of referring to an old man. “Peter’s not very old,” Dad says, “he’s ten years younger than me.” I point out that this still makes him 75, but Dad is unimpressed.

I take “a passion for desserts” from my bag. I never cook elaborate stuff at home anymore, so the cookbooks are migrating to Dad’s house. “This whole book is all about desserts,” I tell him, handing it over for inspection. “This is heavy, wow.” Dad turns the pages. “I cannot see a damn thing,” he says, “I don’t understand what happened. I think, I’m not sure, but I think there’s a whole- it’s a mystery to me. I think there’s some kind of deliberateness going on. I still suspect there’s some kind of a plot with engineers, people who are interested in it. I just can’t believe that things can happen – bang – just like that.” I try to tell him that it’s a cumulative effect, that he’s been having trouble with his eyes for a long time, but I can tell he’s not persuaded.

Double Trouble

Another stress dream: I’m at a concert. My high school boyfriend (a real-life musician) is performing and I’m in the audience with Dad, trying to calm an Alzheimer’s freakout. Suddenly, I realize that there’s not one Dad, but two identical ones. The other one is across the room and he, too, is in distress and needs me. I try asking the boyfriend and other people, who in the dream I knew, for help, but they all get in a van and drive away, leaving me with the two Dads. I wake up in a panic.

What’s actually going on is that Kate S. is having surgery tomorrow and will be stuck in bed for weeks, leaving us with the same number of Dads but half the available Kates, and Brianna’s primary mission will be helping her.

On top of that, Marie is going on vacation next week. Her friend Mary who’s sweet and reliable but speaks very little English, will be here instead.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” says Dad, “I was hoping you’d turn up since it’s a Wednesday,” thereby ruining my plan to dash in, make macaroons, serve him dinner and then dash off to a seder in Brooklyn. With a greeting like that, how could I give him any less than a full evening?

Charlie calls, “I was talking to Addison,” he quavers “and he doesn’t know anything about the planes that crashed into the Trade Center. He said he’d never heard of it.” He sounds faintly accusatory, as though there’d been a conspiracy to keep Dad unaware of the disaster. “He probably forgot,” I tell Charlie. “It might be convenient to have a memory that can erase,” he says. “How is he?” he wanted to know. “He’s OK,” I assured him, “he’s just finishing dinner.” “Does he have a cigar?” “No, we’re about to have ice cream.” “Ice Cream!!” says Dad, overhearing. I hush him, and finish talking to Charlie, before I fetch Dad an ice cream sandwich, which he eats with such enthusiasm that I offer him another. “Well,” he says, thoughtfully, “we wouldn’t want it to melt,” and eats it with gusto.

I got a new cd of “Sapphires and Garlic,” to replace the one that was skipping, and Dad is enjoying it, with bursts of laughter every now and then.

“I went crazy and bought way more coconut than I need,” I tell Dad. “How many are there?” he asks. “Here’s one package, and another package, and another package, and one more.” “Oh my god!” says Dad, his lap filled with coconut, “What are you going to do with them?” “I’ll have to figure something out."

Dad’s trying to wrap his head around this weekend’s plans – with Kate sidelined, we’re going to have to go to her house on sunday, where I’ll cook a kosher-for-Passover Easter dinner (with four people, we have two of jewish heritage, one practicing jew, one Buddhist and three Unitarians!!!). “I can’t go anywhere by myself,” Dad informs me seriously, as though this is news. “Of course not,” I reassure him. “Are you expecting me to be here on Saturday?” he asks. “Why,” I say, teasing, “do you have plans?” “No,” he says, not getting the joke.

Star Trek

Today, when I arrived, Dad was discombobulated. “I can’t even remember my name,” he said, distressed. “What’s my name?” “Addison Bray,” I responded, trying not to panic. Dad looked offended. “There’s a fancier name than that,” he said in his best old New England aristocratic tone. I had left out his middle name. “Addison Sergeant Bray,” I corrected and he was satisfied.

I’ve learned that lack of caffeine, food, or water are all things that exaggerate Dad’s memory problems, so I got him seated and brought him a cup of coffee, a yoghurt, and started boiling a couple of eggs. Once he had his snack in front of him, Dad said “of everyone in the United States, you are the best person, the best person, the best person.” Quite high praise for something waitresses do a hundred times a day.

I got Dad started popping bubble wrap again, and he began pondering it. “How do they get the air in it?” he asked. Definitely a question for Google. “Is this a new stunt or have they been doing it a long time?” Another question for Google: when was bubble wrap invented?

A loud siren sounds outside his house, a police car or an ambulance in a big hurry. “That’s the most bitchy of them all,” says Dad, who doesn’t appreciate the noise.

The other day, I was flipping through a notebook that had turned up somewhere in Dad’s apartment. Labeled just “Notes” in contains lines from essays and stories he meant to write, but, most interestingly, a page of ideas for Star Trek episodes!!! This would be less surprising if my Dad were a fan from the 1960s, but, in fact, he only got introduced to Star Trek through me, in 1989, my 9th grade year. Dad would sometimes be hanging around and wind up watching episodes with me or he’d inquire about the book I was reading, which were often Star Trek books. Back then, he was constantly asking me whether they’d done certain things, and apparently this was to see if his ideas were already taken. When I mentioned finding these notes to Kate S., she told me that he’d told her at some point that he wanted to write for Star Trek, news to me.

The only evidence I had that Star Trek had had any impression on him was while he was being tested for his formal Alzheimer’s diagnosis. He emerged from his brain CT scan into the waiting room, and, not knowing exactly where in the room I was, announced loudly enough for the whole room to hear, “That was like Star Trek! I thought I was going to wake up in another universe!”

Wal-mart Wal-nuts

Dad is very talkative today.

“ I missed you almost insanely. I had a feeling that you were off for the wilderness and never coming back.” Dad tells me. “I would never do that,” I say, shocked. He continues, “After you left, I was distracted, I couldn’t think of anything else but you, I wandered around. I’m not crazy, but I was practically hysterical five minutes after you left. I was very depressed. I think you’re far and away the most pleasant easy-going person I have ever known.”

He also is thinking about the blindness again. He says, “You can tell. You can watch the things go by. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes. Each a little less less less less and then it stops. And this stopped about a week ago.

Then he starts in on a strange story: “As I remember it, a guy paid a balance, he put in money, he was there, he took his clothes off and did something. One day one person, the next day another person. But I assume it’s you , because you’re definitely a person to jump into it. What the other guy did, I don’t know. I know I’m half crazy, but anyway.” For the record, I have never taken my clothes off in the bank.

I heat up his lunch, and then give him a slice of cheesecake. “I don’t think there’s much cheese in it, it’s all sweet, but it’s gorgeous. If I eat this every day, I’d be one hundred pounds heavier,” he says.

When he’s done, he surveys the sticky mess in front of him and says, in French, “I need to clean the table.” He gathers up some trash and then looks confused. “Put that in the garbage,” I tell him. “Where’s the garbage?” he asks. “On the doorknob.” This is where Dad has stored his garbage, in re-used plastic grocery bags, my entire lifetime. On his way across the room, he says “cat, get out of the way.” I’m puzzled because the cat is sleeping on the couch. Then I realize he’s talking to my socks, which I have left on the floor! “Those are my socks,” I tell him. “I thought they were a cat,” he says – never mind that the socks are black and his cat is white.

Watching me try to deal with the vast amount of white fur Kristen is shedding, Dad remarks “the cat must dream up a lot of hair.”

“What are we having for dinner tomorrow?” Dad asks. “I’m making rosemary pasta with walnuts. I’m bringing rosemary from my garden.” “Wal-mart?” “No, walnuts, it’s a nut, like almonds, pecans, walnuts,” I try to explain. “Is it?” says Dad.

Walking Sadly

I get to Dad’s house and find him in bed, listening to a book. He hasn’t even heard me come in, so I flop down on the bed beside him. Noticing me, he fumbles for the red “off” button. Neither of us is in a hurry to move, so we just hang out there, talking. For a few minutes it feels like the old days. “Are you going to quit your job?” he asks. I’m a little stunned because I have worked hard to keep any of the issues at work and other stressful stuff, away from him. “I remember,” he says, “you were walking sadly.” Walking sadly? Can my very motion give me away? “I watch you,” he adds, confirming it. Even with his limited vision, he must get some kind of overall image or vibe, so even while I’m carefully arranging my face and regulating my voice, the rest of me is radiating emotion that he can pick up on.

Dad and I are listening to “Magic of the Panpipes,” a cd of classical music and showtunes played on the panpipe. At one point, the music swells, and I tell Dad “It’s very dramatic.” “Yes,” he says, “the ghost is about to appear now,”and then, as the music gets gentle and springlike, he adds “the two lovers are here.” He doesn’t appear to actually know the piece, so, as far as I can tell, he’s totally making it up, but it’s completely appropriate. Every ten minutes or so he asks, “what’s the main instrument?” and I tell him “Panflute,” but it just doesn’t stick.

I give Dad a piece of bubble wrap I have saved for him – it came from a ceramic supplier, so the things to pop are larger than usual and Dad says, “this is a biggie.”

Dad doesn’t usually like pizza – he calls it “leather with stuff on it,” but tonight he asks for it. Unfortunately, he proceeds to eat the crust first, and then asks me what he’s supposed to pick it up by. I roll it up for him, burrito-style - so he can finish it.

Panpipes over, I put on the Indigo Girls – totally different, but Dad goes with the flow, rocking his chair and nodding his head to their rhythms. One thing that makes Dad easy to take care of is that he’s just not picky at all. He’ll eat almost anything, he enjoys all types of music, and his general attitude is that he’s up for anything.

“Your forearms aren’t getting all knotty, are they?” Dad asks me suddenly. “No,” I say, “it takes 70 or 80 years to get them like ,this,” he says, holding out his arm.

Lights Out

Dad is halfway through eating his dinner when I arrive. Usually, he finishes his dinner while I eat mine, but today he pushes his half-eaten meal away, and looks at me hopefully. “Got any goodies?” “Aren’t you going to finish your dinner?” “I don’t think so. I think I’d rather have what you have.” So I get out a cupcake and slice it up for him, but I’m going to have to keep an eye on this, because substituting sweets for real food could get to be a problem.

We settle down and listen to Ruth Reichl reading her book about being a restaurant critic, “Sapphires and Garlic”. We’re content until we hit a flaw in the cd and the machine starts echoing and stuttering. I turn it off.

“I feel doomed,” says Dad. “You feel doomed? “ I ask, hoping for clarification. “I can’t see anything. Something has just crashed. Crashed. I don’t know what to do. An hour ago I could see, sort of, but now I can’t see anything. It’s all over.” “Dad, you say that every night. I think you see worse at night because the sun goes down. “I can’t see you. I can’t see you.” He yawns. “Are you getting tired?” “No, I’m getting hysterical.” I bring the cat over and put her in his lap, hoping she will distract him.

“I wonder if this is happening to all the buildings around here or is it just this apartment? How does it happen? I don’t change my lifestyle one bit.” I think we’re still talking about blindness, but I’m not sure.” “Maybe it’s like a lightbulb blowing out?” I suggest. “That’s an idea. Have you had it happen any other place?” “No,” I say, gingerly, since I’m not too sure what we’re actually talking about. “A lightbulb blew out in my bedroom today,” I say, trying to distract. “That’s nothing,” says Dad, “it happens all the time, doesn’t it?”

Later he says, “All the lights go out. I wonder if the rest of the building is like this?” I realize he’s thinking that there is a blackout. He sticks his head into the hallway, “all the lights are here,” he reports. He checks the kitchen, and then goes into the bathroom, “the light's on in the bathroom, the light’s on in here. I guess it’s just one bulb.”

It’s true that the living room is dim, since all the lights are on one side of the room. I wonder if brighter lights in here would help relieve his night-time blindness attacks. He returns to his rocker and “discovers” that the lights in the living room are on, too. “When I got up, all the lights went on,” he says.

I tell him about the rally yesterday and describe putting the pillows and sleeping bag on the ground to represent the need for shelter for homeless youth. “They must have gotten pretty dirty,” he says. “Yes, we washed them,” I tell him. “But there wasn’t any violence or anything?” “No, nothing like that.”

I tell Dad I have to call to arrange for the delivery of his new sofabed. At the word “delivery,” he perks up. “A big box came.” “That was the shower chair, not the couch,” I tell him. “She unpacked it all and took it away, I don’t know where she put it.” She is Marie, in this case. “She put it in the bathtub.” “The bathtub!!!” Dad is agog. It’s true that not many things belong in the bathtub. “It’s a chair for the bathtub, so that you can sit down while you wash up,” I explain, knowing as I say it that the close proximity of “up” and “down” may cause confusion. “I’m going to go see it!” Dad exclaims, getting up. I know he won’t be able to see a white chair in a white bathtub, so I invite myself along. “Let’s go look at it together!” In the bathroom, I lead Dad’s hand. “This is the back of the chair, this is the seat, these are the legs. There are holes in the seat for the water to go through.” Feeling the holes he says, “they’re a quarter of an inch.” It’s odd what remains. When we get back to the table, he asks “isn’t it going to be spattering all over the place?” “You mean from the water hitting the shower chair?” I clarify. “Yes.” “The shower curtain will keep it in,” I reassure him, adding “hopefully” to myself.

“It’s raining harder now than it was before I came,” I tell Dad. “You’ve got a big table,” he says, “bigger than the one I use. “ Say what? Then I realize he’s talking about the new sofabed, which hasn’t been delivered yet. “The thing that’s not there yet, will be there, and it will be more comfortable than this one because it will be brand new and this one’s over 100 years old.” All this is Dad trying to tell me I could avoid the rain by sleeping over!