Stumble It!
We expected Dad to have trouble with the Ithaca winters
after having lived in southern Florida for so long. In Melbourne he rarely used the air-conditioning, even when
the temperature hit ninety. But
somehow his Florida experience had been wiped clean from his mind. He compared the rural scenery he saw in
Ithaca to Newark, New Jersey, appreciating its cleanliness and the beauty of
the lake and hills. As soon as the
temperature would get near seventy in his room, he complained about the heat. He did the same thing if I didn’t turn
my car heater off soon enough. It
was as if his body, as well as his mind, thought he had lived in the northeast
all his life.
I had to be an interpreter of signs because Dad couldn’t
remember the near past beyond a few minutes. I couldn’t ask him what he had had for lunch or whether he
enjoyed his son’s visit the past weekend because that information wasn’t
available to him.
Patterns helped.
I visited three or four times a week, and he often called me on the
phone when he was lonely or bored.
“Can you bring me over to your house?” he would ask. “This place is dead today. No one’s around.” I left my phone number plastered in
large print on the wall near his phone.
“I can’t come now Dad, but I’ll be there later this
afternoon.”
“What time?
I’ll make sure I’m here.”
One time I found him sitting in a chair in the hall outside
his door with his coat in hand, waiting for me.
(to be continued)
