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!