Eels talking and trying to escape

I had a hard time sleeping last night – like a mother with a new baby, I was totally tuned in to Dad, anxiously listening to every rustle. I did have to get up a couple of times to lead him to the bathroom – by the third of fourth time, he found his own way there. Besides my own anxiety about how he was going to adjust to the new surroundings, I also had to deal with the lack of soothing cat-purring – since I usually sleep with about seven cats, being alone in bed feels strange to me.

“It’s a new world,” Dad kept proclaiming, rather loudly, at breakfast in the Mohonk dining room – a meal he called “the early-morning dinner.” He was a little groggy and confused from having been woken earlier than he’s used to in order to get to breakfast on time.

After breakfast, Brianna took Dad to the gym, to give me some time to myself. Dad enjoyed using the stationary bike, since it reminds him of the years he spent biking through Central Park to the school where he taught, in East Harlem. After the gym, Kate S. brought him to the pool, where he reclined on a lounge and listened to the new-agey music, while we swam. You can actually hear the music under the water, but even from his poolside vantage point, Dad said the music sounded like “eels talking and trying to escape.”

Leaving the pool, we were leading him down the hallway, no doubt looking like a couple of tugboats in skirts towing an elderly barge, when he suddenly started singing a John Phillip Souza march – I can’t remember its name, but its one of the patriotic ones. “It’s stuck in my head,” he informed a passing Mohonk staff member.

Back in the dining room for lunch, he suddenly announced, “when you’re in the eighties, you don’t give a damn what you might do!”

After lunch, Kate S. delivered him to the spa for a 50-minute massage – almost an hour free of his constant questions for me! When I went to collect him afterwards, he proclaimed it “marvelous! She didn’t miss a quarter of an inch.” He also said that nothing hurt or felt uncomfortable, even his cranky knees. To my surprise, he actually looked younger after the massage – he was so relaxed that his skin was smoother and it had stimulated his circulation so that his skin tone was pinker than usual.

Mohonk lent us a wheelchair so that we can get him from one end of this very long building to the other – he walked it twice, but that was enough for him. He’s actually getting way more activity here than he ever does at home and he’s been holding up pretty well.

After dinner, Brianna took him to smoke outside under a canopy in the rain. By the time she returned him, he was thoroughly worn out and fell asleep right away, still wearing his baseball cap.