july 20: green cats

Dad opens the cookie tin that sits within arm’s reach of his chair and feels around inside. “Someone ate ALL the cookies,” he announces, indignantly. “Dad,” I say, trying not to laugh, “I think that was you.” “No,” he says, “I ate some, but not all. Someone sneaky ate them.”

“How do you change your clothes?” he asks, out of the blue. While I’m pondering how to respond, it occurs to me that earlier I told him I had just come from swimming. “You mean, at the swimming pool?” I ask. “Yes,” he says. “There’s a locker room,” I tell him.

I am showing Dad the new nightgown I got to replace my old, holey one. “Green’s my favorite color,” I tell him. “All your cats are green?” he asks. “My clothes are green, but not my cats,” I explain. “Why not?” he wants to know. “Cats don’t come in green,” I tell him. He examines the nightgown and then tells me to “break it in.”

Dad’s looking for the cat, feeling around by his chair to see if she is close. “Kitty cat, where you at?” he repeats, over and over in a range of voices from bass to falsetto.

Dad is having a philosophical moment. “Bad things happen,” he says. “Good things happen. And a lot of in between things happen.”

Dad is slowly making his way to the bathroom. In the hall, he passes the coathooks and pauses to examine the long, slender form of his folding chair in it’s bag. Apparently deciding that it is a person, he speaks to it briefly, and then continues down the hall.

When he returns, he settles back into his rocker, and picks up a green plastic tumbler from the table. Examining it closely, he asks, “do you think there’s lead in some of these? Some of them are pretty heavy.”

As it gets later, I notice him staring into empty space, a sign that he’s hallucinating. “Every once in a while,” he says, “a whole piece of material turns up, and then it goes and then it comes back again. I’ve never seen it, I’ve only seen illustrations, drawings, actual pieces.”

“Waggling,” says Dad. “Is that a real term or is that one of mine?” I’m impressed that he has enough awareness to realize that there are words that are his alone.

“What should I do to make up for all these guesses and gaps?” says Dad, apparently referring to his mental state. I wish I had an answer for him.

We spend a long time reviewing the plan for the coming three days, going over who will come see him which day. Thinking that no one is coming on Thursday, Dad concludes, “no one will see me except myself.” I remind him that I come on Thursdays and he seems relieved. He knows that it’s not good for him to be alone anymore.

He wants to know why I’m not coming on Wednesday, and I explain that I will be making sculptures. Dad remembers my sculptures, and is as supportive of them as ever. “Some of them are very complete,” he says. “Some of them are very weird. Some of them I never heard of, before or since.”