is marie still alive?

Eating an English muffin for breakfast, I find myself thinking of Dad and missing the English muffins he used to make for me. He used an ancient toaster, a filigreed metal thing that opened from the sides and had no pop-up mechanism so you really had to pay attention. I don’t know know what it was about that toaster, but it made the best English muffins. We had to put it on high shelf a few years ago because Dad would forget that it was on and let things burn. If I want to make him toast, I just use the broiler now.

“Who’s singing?” Dad asks, listening to the cd I put on. “Sounds familiar.” “Pete Seeger,” I shout from the kitchen. “Pete Seeger,” he exclaimed. “How old is he?” “90!” I yelled back. “He’s older than me! And he’s singing,” said Dad, clapping his hands in approval.

Dad has trouble “catching” round items – like cherry tomatoes and olives – with his fork, despite my effort to get him to stab, so I often wind up helping him by stabbing things and then handing him the fork. Tonight, I am eating a popsicle with one hand and stabbing his salad with the other – being ambidextrous has never been so useful!

“Dad, I’m going crazy,” I wail. He’s looking at me in puzzled surprise. “I just threw my keys in the garbage,” I tell him. “You ARE going crazy,” he says. ”Did you get them out?”

Dad is on his I-didn’t-do-anything-with-my-life schpiel again. “You raised me.” I tell him. “I don’t know if you’d be any different, but I certainly poured a lot of things into you,” he says. I have an image of the top of my head open, like Data on Star Trek, with Dad pouring various substances in. “I had a good time with you.”

Dad wants to knock the ashes off his cigar, so I put the ashtray in front of him. He gropes around and finds the butt of yesterday’s cigar. “That’s yesterday’s cigar,” I tell him. “Where’s today’s cigar?” he asks. “In your hand,” I tell him. “What a brilliant person you are,” He says.

“Is Marie still alive?” He asks. I’m surprised, but I answer, “Of course, she’ll be here tomorrow.” “What does she do for a living?” he wants to know. “She works for you, Dad.” I remind him. “I’m getting pretty stupid,” he says.

Question of the week: "Does anyone know when they stop being a kid and start being people?"