are all your chickens fine and fit?

“Are all your chickens fine and fit?” Dad asks me, by way of a greeting. He means my cats. I haven’t had any chickens since we sold our old house, which had a flock of stray chickens that just showed up and roosted in what we thought was a cherry tree.

“You know what bothers me? I can’t speak correctly often. It’s getting worse and worse. I suppose it’s because I’m getting older and older,” Dad says. It makes me sad to hear this. I can only imagine what it’s like to have to struggle to communicate, especially when you’ve once had several languages’ worth of words at your command.

Yesterday Kate S. and Michael were hanging out with Dad while I went to the studio. At one point, Michael got tongue-twisted and said something about turning “wine into water.” Kate S., joking, responded, “I can do that, just give me a bottle of wine and I’ll show you.” She says Dad got the joke and laughed for a long time.

Tonight Dad seems tired and distant. When I arrive, he’s in the bedroom. I let him sleep until the ringing phone wakes him and he shuffles out, surprised to see me. He spends an hour eating his dinner, saying nothing except the time – he’s sitting at the counter opposite the microwave and apparently he can see the red numbers on the clock. Every minute, he mutters the new time between bites, “six-oh-seven, six-oh-eight.” After dinner, he devours his cupcake, but then says he feels too full and wants to lie down. When he comes back out, Kate S. is on the phone. She tells him she’ll be here for dinner tomorrow and that I’m cooking and he says we’ll all get “Fat, fat, fat.” Then I settle in to read.

“What time is it?” Dad asks, after I finish our latest Ruth Reichl reading. “8:30pm,” I tell him. “Do you think I’ll be able to get home?” he asks me, as though he’s stayed out too late somewhere. “Dad, you live here, it shouldn’t be too difficult,” I tell him. He wants to know where his bed is, so I lead him from his chair, and through the living room. As we pass the refrigerator and head into the kitchen, he suddenly comes to, like he’s breaking through the surface of a murky lake, and he’s able to go the rest of the way by himself.