august 21 86th birthday

August 21, 2009

Today is Dad’s 86th birthday! He has re-discovered it several times; as in “today is our birthday?” “No, Dad, it’s YOUR birthday!”and mostly been delighted, although shocked by his age. He says, “I don’t feel more than 25.”

We all gathered in one of our motel rooms and presented him with his gifts: a “stop the whaling” sweatshirt, four music cds - including one of Souza marches (uh-oh) – a hat with the logo of his cigar store, and the most exciting – a box of 100 Macanudo Ascots, his current favorite cigar. He was very happy.

The celebration continued tonight at Alchemy, one of the best restaurants in Gloucester, with our friends John and Paul Henry. Dad wasn’t at his best – we’d been dragging him around all day and he was tired and the restaurant was noisy. He was impatient and barely involved in the conversation; his sole focus seemed to be on dessert. He was also doing his voices, the first time I’ve seen him do that in public, and, on the way out, his groping hand landed squarely on a strange man’s ass. Ooops! To the guy’s credit, he ignored it.

Earlier in the day, we went to Rockport, with the primary goal of purchasing salt water taffy, which is made at this ancient candy store called Tuck’s. Since Dad’s walking is limited, we had to take turns sitting on a bench with him while the others went into the store. Rockport is a lovely, picturesque place to wander around – great for window-shopping, a favorite activity of Brianna’s – but none of us could really wander freely without worrying about whoever was stuck baking on the bench with Dad. We didn’t stay long.

We also went on a quest: to find Dad’s safe-deposit box. We know he has one, probably opened about 60 years ago, but we don’t know which bank it’s in or what, if anything, is inside. We started with the Bank of Gloucester, the obvious choice since he has an old savings account there, but no luck. We then tried the Cape Ann savings bank, which seemed familiar to Dad, but had no records of his box. In the Cape Ann bank, there was a line, and Dad quickly got tired, and began – loudly – asking for a chair. Finally, I got out of line and guided him to a green sofa on one side of the lobby, where he sat kicking his feet with the orange clogs. Luckily, the teller was kind and didn’t make a fuss about him not being the one making the request. I think we’re going to have to wait until the annual bill comes and see which bank it’s from.