August 19: Gloucester 1

8/19/09

We’re in Gloucester! It’s been a long day – tons of traffic caused by an accident on the way up, and, of course, frequent bathroom stops for Dad.

We got off to a wacky start when Brianna arrived at Dad’s apartment and found him still undressed and saying that he didn’t want to go, that we should just go without him. She managed to convince him to get dressed and then got him downstairs and into the car, but as we were driving, he was making comments about being “forced to go on this expedition.” It wasn’t until after lunch that he started to get more enthusiastic, saying that he was glad he came.

One of the most nerve-wracking aspects of traveling with Dad is having to send him into public men’s rooms without us. At a rest stop today, he was gone for long enough that Kate S. and I were getting anxious and hovering by the door. Finally Kate S. asked a man coming out whether he had seen an old man “bumbling around” in there – he often can’t find the exit and just wanders until he comes across it by accident. The guy assured us, in a southern drawl, that another guy was helping him, and indeed, Dad reappeared on the arm of another man. Thank goodness for kind strangers.

We had a funny moment in the car – Dad was doing his usual feeling of things around him, and came to Brianna, sitting next to him in the backseat. He ran his hand over her face in the usual blind-and-curious style, and then announced, “you need a shave!” We all laughed and laughed at that.

One problem was his difficulty remembering where we were going. The whole way he kept asking and we kept reminding him that we were going to Gloucester. Then once we arrived, he didn’t believe us when we told him we were in Gloucester! Finally, Brianna thought of a creative way to convince him – she went into a gas station and came back with a bottle of Moxie, a very local drink, and had Dad drink it so that he would know where he was. Moxie seems to be Dad’s madeleine.

When we got to our house, I told Dad we were at 424 Essex Ave., and he said, “I live here!”apparently forgetting that he left Gloucester at twenty and has never really lived here since. Since the house is rented to our friend John and his brother, we aren’t staying there.

Arriving at the motel, I gave Dad a tour of the room. When came to the bathroom, he pointed at the toilet, and said, “is this the teapot?” a cross between “toilet” and “pisspot” – a word he still sometimes uses even though the days of outhouses in Gloucester and chamber pots are long gone.

More anxiety dreams last night - in one, we were swimming and suddenly I realized Dad was underwater. I hauled him out, all limp and grey. In the second, Dad had turned into this tiny, fragile worm-thing that I was holding very gingerly in the palm of my hand.