The Old Folks' Home

Got on a 7AM flight this morning to make a business trip to Florida -- and, also, to look in on the aged and revered parents.

As the youngest of six children, I have no problem at all regressing into an infantile and dependent state -- even though my father and mother are 90 and 84, respectively, and could use more someone with a little more "initiative" (one of my dad's favorite admonitions when we were growing up was "Show some initiative!" We never knew what it meant, and didn't have the initiative to get the dictionary down off that high shelf).

The patterns in this house form a mnemonic choir that sings to me a lullaby of protection and sloth, borne out of the years of walks on the beach and afternoon naps in the bedroom facing the Gulf of Mexico. The colors and textures -- the salmon-pink tiles in the back bathroom, with its inexplicable three toilet-paper holders and its faux cut-glass doorknob -- are so familiar to me that I make conscious efforts, every time I'm here, to shock myself into pretending it's the first time I'll see them, or the last; and I try to open my eyes so that I can see any little hint of dilapidation in the house, or of descent in my parents.

The steps of their marital ballet, choreographed over six decades ago, are the same as they ever were: my father's anxious solicitousness in the kitchen; my mother's exasperation before guests arrive, and her expansiveness the moment they appear; the parents' tendency to carry on conversations across several minutes and between distant rooms, my father ensconced in his chair watching a ballgame, my mother engaged in a fierce post-prandial sterilization of their tiny galley kitchen; occasional calls from Dad, extending the obligatory offer from help that we all hope will not be accepted; these are the backdrop of their evenings, and of a childhood that I get to revisit, oddly enough, only on business trips.

Tomorrow I will, in the immortal words of Edward Albee, gird my blue-veined loins; I'll put on my "game face" and head down to Naples for a day of being a boss, casually inspecting the operations of a property that I rescued from condo conversion six years ago and preserved as low-income senior housing. I'll be harangued by at least a few residents about who did what to whom, and what about the property just isn't as good as it was once upon a time. I'll see the staff at the property gamely holding back the voracious elements, the bugs and the weeds and the mold and the heat washing in as the leading edge of summer's frontal assault. I'll review reports and talk to the manager; I'll walk the grounds and the hallways and talk to residents; I'll see and be seen.

I'll stop on the way back to my parents' place and pick up some fresh fish that Mom will cook for dinner. She will insist on cooking. I've never come close to chasing her out of the kitchen. Then my dad and I wage this mock-chivalrous battle over who will sacrifice themselves to the Chore of the Dishes. He will likely win out, although, when he sits down for a rest before tackling the pots and pans, I will jump in and play the hero.

Then we'll go out to the beach and watch the sun sink beyond Sanibel Island, into the brow-line of sky sweating out its daytime fever. Perhaps Dad and I will smoke a cigar; perhaps Mom will do her Vaudeville cough and wave her hand in front of her face, her comic benediction of the smoke that always finds her. And so, in this small way, I become a small player in their pageant again; a guest with a running part on the docu-drama of their dotage.

Next week's episode will include the quiet celebration of their 66th wedding anniversary, a mind-numbing achievement that would indicate, at least to me, that their solicitous dance, and their dancing of it, is a healing dance, a dance that honors love and hallows time and makes every habitual gesture a breath of new life.

Tomorrow night, I will wheel the garbage out to the roadside for Tuesday morning pickup. On Tuesday morning, I'll kiss the aged and revered parents goodbye, head to work, then to the airport. In a couple of weeks, the parents will migrate northward to Chicago for the summer. They'll engage in their tragi-comic nesting ritual for a couple of days, struggling to find reading glasses and set up their laptop and get their dressers organized; then they will slowly unwind, and all will be as it was, for as long as it can be.

They'll be home again, and so will I.

--T.A.

Comments

[amba]

It always bothers me when you call them "the aged and revered parents." I don't think of them as old, although I know they are; I just think of them as them. It's probably because I'm almost as old as they are.

[david]

There's no shame in being old.