Monkeys, Channel Locks, and Vicodin

A decade or so ago, I worked at the San Diego Zoo for four years as a primate keeper. My area was off-exhibit, up the hill in the back of the zoo, above the hippo enclosure, below the research building and the zoo hospital. I cared for about forty to fifty monkeys, most of them Lion-Tailed Macaques. My workday started early--6am--usually just as the sun was coming up. But depending on the time of year, it was often still dark when I walked down the hill to my area to unlock the first door leading into what was affectionately known as The Primate Pad.

I had this very precise routine I followed every morning when I arrived to work. It had to be precise. It had to be a routine. When you care for 25lb monkeys with incisors the size of raptor claws, you need to be on your toes, especially at 6am, and especially if it's dark. It's not that they were vicious, but they got moody just like anybody else. If one of my monkeys was having a bad day, it was important for me to know that sooner rather than later.

There were two locked doors leading into my area which was entirely enclosed in wire mesh. Picture forty individual cages of various sizes surrounded by one big giant cage. That way, if an animal got out, it was still enclosed. Some of the monkeys were housed by themselves while others were housed in groups. The males, about a dozen, were in individual walk-in cages with steel slide-locks. As most of you probably know, monkeys are geniuses at figuring stuff out. Stuff like how to unslide steel slide-locks. As a result, I was always double-checking the locks to make sure they were secured. Every time an animal was moved into or out of the cage, I made sure the lock was secured. But of course........every once in a while I got side-tracked or distracted and forgot to secure the lock, which is why I was constantly checking the locks--first thing in the morning, throughout the day, and before I left to go home. That way, if I DID forget to secure a lock, I usually (hopefully) caught it first, before the monkey did. Usually.

So back to my morning routine. From the moment I walked up to unlock the first door, I made a point of noticing any change, any unusual-ness, any detail that was out of its normal order. It could be a thing, a sound, even a smell. Anything that just wasn't quite right.

One morning I arrived, walked down the hill, unlocked the first door, and it was right after I got through the second door that I noticed it--something was different. Something was......off. I walked into the area, locked the door behind me, and then, because I knew something was "off", I immediately proceeded with my morning rounds, checking each cage, each lock, each animal. Sure enough, one of the cage doors was open, and worse, it was vacant. Turned out, one of the males, Wally, had escaped and was loose in the area--outside the individual cages, but still inside the giant cage. I quickly found him walking casually down one of the other rows. Wally was pretty lackadaisical about the whole thing. It was almost like he knew he was busted. With a little bit of coaxing, he quite agreeably walked right back into his enclosure. This time I made sure the lock was secured.

Another morning, when I walked into the area, I noticed the visual picture was "off." I looked down the center row of enclosures and there was just something that wasn't quite right. Usually when I walked in first thing in the morning, all the monkeys would immediately come right up to their enclosure doors and sit, pressed against the wire mesh, looking up the aisle at me. Like they were trying to.....I'm not sure what.....observe me, assess my mood? They would sit there, each of them, right AT the door, their black fur tufting through the holes in the mesh. As I looked down the row, I could see the hair of each individual poking through the cage. Except....on this one particular morning, one of the males, Tulsi, wasn't there. So I walked down to his cage to see where he might be--I figured maybe he was resting in another corner, maybe he was playing with a bug on one of the shelves--kind of unusual first thing in the morning but not unheard of.

I was completely unprepared for what I saw. When I got to his enclosure I found him lying on the floor, on his side. Dead. I'll never forget that morning. I have this vivid memory of me carrying Tulsi's lifeless body up to the hill to the zoo hospital, the sun not even up yet. I kept getting this crazy thought, "What if he's really faking it and he's going to jump out of my arms any second and escape to freedom in Balboa Park?" The vets thought that maybe Tulsi lost his balance and fell. Tulsi was profoundly deaf and so it made sense that he may have had balance problems too. They speculated that maybe he slipped in the night, fell, knocked his head. Who knows.

Anyway......so here's the connection to Mom and Dad.

So when I come home at night it's almost always very late. I generally leave in the afternoon, about every other day, once I finish work and I know Mom and Dad are settled and stable. I go to my house in Port Townsend, run errands, visit friends, whatever. A sanity break. By the time I get back it's late. It's long after Mom and Dad have gone to bed. The house is quiet, only a few lights are on. But this is what's weird. Every single time I come home, from the moment I pull my car into the garage, my brain goes into this sort of "keeper mode," like when I was working at the zoo--scanning the area for details that aren't right, assessing the environment, looking for things that are out of order. I walk into the house from the garage and I can tell my senses are in overdrive, scanning the air, looking, listening, smelling, feeling for anything that isn't what it usually is. Almost always, everything exactly as it should be, and so I go to bed.

Anyway.........I come home last night. It's about 1am. I pull into the garage and the first thing I notice is that the red toolbox Dad keeps in the garage on the shelf above the trash cans, is pulled off the shelf and is now setting on top of one of the trash cans.

And I'm thinking, "Uh oh, why is the toolbox pulled off the shelf?"

Then I notice the old DirecTV DVR that WAS on TOP of one of the trash cans (to go to the recycle center) is now on its side on the ground NEXT to the trash can. Ya know, like "somebody" pushed it OFF the trash can. Like "somebody" might do if "somebody" was frantic and went to pull the toolbox off the shelf and set it on the trash can, but the DirecTV DVR was in the way so it was just shoved OFF the trash can and onto the ground. (Cuz.....ya see........before Dad mellowed out, he used to be really big on just knocking stuff out of his way--furniture, toys, us. He used to have a pretty short fuse. When we sensed Dad was in a bad mood, we made sure his path was clear. Now at ninety-three, Dad hardly ever gets pissy and tosses stuff around like he used to. Except when somebody moves the ICan'tBelieveIt'sNotButter or the Ranch dressing to where he can't see it in the fridge.)

So now I'm thinking, "Uh oh, something must've broke, which stressed Dad out, so he came out to the garage to get his toolbox off the shelf, but the DVR was in the way, so he just shoved the DVR aside, and it fell on the ground." And now I'm like a detective trying to image what I'm going to find when I finally get into the house. A broken faucet? A broken coffee-maker? A broken walker? Two broken walkers?

I open the door and walk in. It's dark so I turn on the kitchen light. My eyes immediately go to the kitchen counter. There are tools spread out all over it. Screwdrivers, pliers, hammers, and a channel lock. A channel lock?

Now I'm thinking, "Shit. He took out every tool we own! What the heck happened here? Why did he need a channel lock?"

So I walk down the hall toward Mom and Dad's bedrooms. I can hear them both snoring away. Okay. That's good.

I peek into each room. Each walker is in one piece. Good.

I check each bathroom. Faucets intact. Toilets intact. Nothing overflowed. Good.

Next I check the living room. TV intact. Phones intact. Hydraulic chair intact. Check. Check. Check. So, but now I'm a little perplexed. Something tool-worthy happened here tonight, but I have no idea what it was. I go to bed with my curiosity piqued. I wouldn't find out what happened until morning.

Cut to this morning.

As soon as Dad is up, I go in to find out what happened. We exchange "Good morning" greetings, then I ask him, "So what's with all the tools in the kitchen?"

Dad: "What? OHHH yeah, I was looking for a channel lock." And he says it as if this sort of thing happens all the time. But before I can ask about the channel lock, he says, " And I found it! But I needed a second channel lock, and I looked everywhere for one, but I couldn't find one."

Me: "Channel lock? Did something break?"

Dad: "No, no.........it was about midnight.......your mom...." Then he gives me one of his your-mom-had-one-of-her-moments looks. "She couldn't get her Vicodin opened and she panicked (Mom is addicted to prescription meds. Has been for years. Vicodin is one of them.) and was calling for me to help her. But hell if I couldn't open it either! So....I went out to the garage to see if there was another channel lock in the tool box. I was going to use two of them to open the container but I could only find one and so... well I ended up finally getting it open anyway, but by then I was so exhausted I just left all the tools out on the kitchen counter and went to bed."

Me: "Whoa. I mean, wow. What a night!"

Dad: "Yeah" Then he sort of laughs and shrugs his shoulders like he does when a Mom-Moment happens and it's one of those things we all just sort of accept because, well, because it is what it is.

I nod. "Yep." I head back into the kitchen and put all the tools back, especially the channel lock. And I can't help thinking, what's going to be that different thing that I first sense when Mom or Dad die? Will it be something I hear, or see, or smell? Or will it be something I just sense? Will I sense it before it actually happens? Just as it happens? Or long after it happens?

Hawking Loogies

Today's blog is not for the faint of stomach, so consider yourself warned. It concerns the physical (and oftentimes very noisy) expulsion of phlegm wads, more popularly known as "hawking loogies" (btw.......the Online Slang Dictionary defines a loogey as "a wad of phlegm." I can't believe I actually looked it up. But I confess....I wasn't sure of the correct spelling.)

Anyway, Dad is infamous in our family for his finely-tuned skill at "hawking loogies." These are not small, insignificant blobs of clear mucous. As far back as I can remember, my father has been bringing up and expelling phlegm wads in his own uniquely ritualized style.

But wait, I should probably let you know what instigated this topic. You're dying to know, right?

Okay, so I'm walking through the living room today. Mom and Dad are both sitting in their respective recliners, watching CNN's coverage of the Health Reform Vote. Dad has been demanding minute-by-minute updates from both Mom and I (remember, he can't hear or see the TV clearly enough to keep tabs himself). As I pass by him on my way to the hallway, he stops me, "Hey!"

"Hey what!" I answer.

"What's the vote?"

"They're still counting" I tell him. I didn't really know, but I knew that was the only answer that would keep more questions from coming. It doesn't work. Dad starts to ask me another question. I think it was something political. Thank god there was a reason for me to interrupt him.
His question starts out something like this, "Hey, don't you think that the Republicans....."

"EWWWWWW! GRRRRROSSSS!"

That was me, responding to the GI-normous wad of wet, green phlegm I suddenly see perched on the gaping button-closure of Dad's rugby shirt. Apparently, Dad's most recent hawking attempt missed its mark.

You see, normally Dad's Hawking-the-Loogy ritual goes something like this:

First, Dad makes this gawd-awful sound in this throat--like some weird Jabba-the-Hut-like alien is trying to cough up another weird Jabba-the-Hut-like alien. The sound goes on for at least 15 seconds, maybe longer, while Dad epiglottal-ly sweeps every nook and cranny of his entire pharyngeal cavity. I'm not sure if the sound is as gross as it is because of the sound itself, or because I know what's coming next. It's probably both.

The next step is the actual expulsion part of this ritual and it has two possible endpoints--either a carefully folded piece of Kleenex, or any object, living or non-living, that has terrible misfortune of being within a three-foot radius of my father's mouth (Case in point: the time when we were kids, in the family station wagon, and my sister was sitting directly behind Dad.....her window down. In a fraction of a second, the laws of physics that govern moving vehicles and wind, carried that loogy directly from my father's mouth smack into my sister's face. I've never laughed so hard in my life.)
But I digress.
By the looks of Exhibit A, which is now setting, like a jiggling little wad of fermented Jello, on my father's shirt, clearly even the presence of Kleenex is no guarantee that said phlegm wad will, in fact, end up in the Kleenex even when said Kleenex is implemented in the intended fashion.

Right. So.......anyway, there it was. All slimy and green and just setting there on his shirt. My hands are flapping in disgust amid cries of "Ew, Ew, Ew!" and my face is all squished up because, I mean, it's just soooo gross! My mother is smiling, amused, and Dad is like, "What? What?! What's the matter?"

And I just keep pointing, "EW! EW! EW!"

And he says innocently, "Oh. Did I miss?"

"EWWWWW! DAD! That is SO gross!"

And he grabs a piece of Kleenex, hands it to me, and says, "Well, here, clean it off for me."

"EWWWW!!! Nooooo! I am not touching it!"

And so he says (and he's just so calm about the whole thing.....which is even more disgusting and unnerving......because, gawd, that thing is right there, under his face, like a giant dormant amoeba!), "Well then, show me where it is so I can clean it off."

So I point.

And he wipes.

But it's still there.

So I point again.

And he wipes again.

But it's still there.

I point one last time.

He wipes.

It's gone.

But wait, there's more.
Yes, he tosses his three Kleenex tissues into the trash can that's next to his chair.
But.......he misses!!! And then Emily, the ravenous bulldog, immediately makes a beeline to those tissues which are now lying on the floor right next to the trash can. She has every intention of eating them (EWWWW!), and I scream, "NOOOO!" and dive for the floor before she can get to them.

Holding the snorting bulldog at bay with one arm, I carefully and meticulously use my other arm to pick up each tissue by the extreme edge and drop them into the trash can, punctuating each effort with a grimaced and squish-faced "EW!"
I get up off the floor, heave a huge sigh of relief, "There!" and leave the room.

All I hear as I walk down the hallway is Dad saying to Mom, "What was so gross about that?"

Crash Course

Dad has a new/old project.

I come home the other day, walk through the living room, and find Dad, in his recliner, with a stack (and I mean a STACK) of all (and I mean ALL) of his "how to speak" Japanese books in his lap. There must have been at least a dozen of them. I'm tempted to make some wise-ass comment to him but figure I'll just let it go. Clearly, Dad has decided to reconnect with his unwavering zest for all things Asian. I'm thinking, I'll just sneak past him and head back to my room.

As usual, I'm wrong.

He hollers me back. "Denise!"

"Eeyah?" I retrace my steps and stand, awaiting his request.

He holds up one of his books, a tattered, edge-worn edition of "Japanese for Dummies." "Can you order me this on Amazon?"

"Sure, " I say dutifully, without asking the obvious question which is why he needs yet another book on speaking Japanese. Better to just humor the man. "Which one would you like, Dad?"

But my head can't really let it go.........I mean.......I just keep thinking........he already owns every book printed on how to speak Japanese. This is an ongoing pastime of Dad's. It has been for years. He LOVES anything Asian but particularly, anything Japanese. He counts in Japanese. When the eye doctor holds up fingers and asks Dad "how many?" Dad answers with the Japanese number. He'll sit in his chair for hours, engrossed in one of his Japanese books, mouthing the words and the sounds out loud. He rattles off Japanese phrases all the time, almost always when he's eating, and to nobody in particular because, in case I forgot to mention it, nobody else in our family speaks Japanese. For all we know, he's telling us all to go lick our butts but we'd never know it.

But back to Dad's book request. He addresses me in his characteristic You-Need-To-Listen-To-Me-Because-I'm-About-To-Tell-You-Something-You-Don't-Know tone, like he's about to unveil something utterly life-changing. He unveils his newsflash, "You know..........publishers print different editions of books."

I hate it when he does this! He starts talking to me about something he just assumes I couldn't possibly know anything about. And I want to say to him, Okay Dad..........Like........I'm a writer. I write freakin' textbooks Dad! I think I KNOW there are different editions of a book!"

Of course I just think all of that. In my head. Quietly to myself.

What actually comes out of my mouth is, "Eeyup." Then I wait for further instructions.

"Okay," he says oh-so-seriously. Not, just a casual "ok." It's more like "OKAY now listen up because this is reeeeally important. Picture..........I'm in a plane, the pilot just died, and Dad's the Flight Controller who's going to talk me down to safety.

He starts very carefully, instructively, "I want.........the latest edition.........of Japanese............For Dummies." Short pause because he assumes my brain needs time to process such complicated information. "Did you get that? Can you get that for me?"

"Yep. I'll go do it right now," and I turn to head to the office, to the computer, to visit Amazon.com, to place the order. I know the drill. I've been "talked down" before.

But he stops me again. "Wait!"

"Yeah!?" I stop. I wait. And what came next.......... I totally did NOT see coming.

"See if they have CHINESE for Dummies too."

What th.......?! Okay. CHINESE? My knee-jerk reaction is: Dad's almost 94 years old and he wants to learn CHINESE!? Isn't that like THE most difficult language to learn in the entire universe? Like.......aren't there like a gazillion different dialects of Chinese? Like.........don't you have to have like.........YEARS to devote to learning Chinese? Maybe decades?! In case anybody has forgotten, my dad is almost 94. Ninety......four.........years........OLD!

But of course I just THINK all of that. Because, I know, it's great that he wants to learn Chinese. Hey, now he can tell us all to lick out butts in two different languages.

What comes out of my mouth is a succinct, "Sure."

Then I turn toward the office again.

But......again he stops me, "WAIT!"

Uh oh. I'm thinking, now what? There's more? He wants to learn another language? He wants to learn.......what?.........one of those weird clicking languages too?

"Mandarin," he adds, "If there's a choice. Get the book on Mandarin."

"OK. Got it. Mandarin. Chinese. Newest edition of Japanese. Done."

Between you and me and the calendar on the wall, I can't help but think, just out of curiosity, how much Mandarin Chinese does Dad really think he'll be able to learn? I mean.........he IS 94 and all. And I know, I know........not that it matters. What matters is that he's pursuing something new, something that excites him, something to keep his brain stimulated. I get all that. Time means nothing to him and that's kind of a blessing. I swear I think my father seriously believes, most of the time anyway, that he's immortal. It amazes me. He amazes me.

Anyway, I turn toward the office again. He yells from the living room.

"Oh and hey! One more thing!"

Oh no. What now? Swahili?

I walk back into the room. I'm facing him. Waiting.

He looks at me, a little half-smile on his face, "Have it shipped overnight. It takes a long time to learn Chinese."

I smile back, chuckle, shake my head. "Eeyup. Got it, Dad."

My dad is not only ambitious. He is realistically ambitious.

Remote Ideas

Dad's in a panic. "DENISE!"

It's 8am. He can't get Animal Planet on his TV. He's frustrated. "I can't get this damn thing to work!"

Background: Yesterday Dad asked me, after reading the post-Oscar blurbs in the Seattle Times, "Have you seen The Hurt Locker?"

"Yeah," I say, "Great movie, you'd love it. In fact, I have the NetFlix DVD now. Do you want to watch it before I send it back?"

"YEAH!" Both arms wave into the air joyfully.

He's pretty excited. A great western, or a great war movie and my dad becomes a giddy little boy on Christmas morning, and I don't care what anybody says, there's something really cute about a giddy old man.

"Okay," I say, "I'll go set it up for you on your TV. All you'll have to do is turn it on tonight when you go to bed (Dad has a TV in his bedroom, which he watches in the morning while he's dressing, and at night before he falls asleep.) and watch it.

"GREAT!" The arms again.

So I get the DVD loaded and set up, ready to go. All Dad has to do is turn on the TV, put on his trusty Sennehiser headset, sit back, and enjoy.

Back to this morning.

So Dad can't get the TV to turn on.

"Did you watch the movie last night?" I ask him.

"No, Christ, I was so pooped last night, I just went to sleep. It took me forever to figure out how to turn that goddamn blue light off. (There is a blue light that glows on the DVD player when it's on. For some reason, those kinds of glowy blue lights always keep him awake. Some part that glowy blue light penetrates his nearly-blind eyes.)

He goes on, "I finally figured it out, but it took me forever! So I never did get to the movie. But I'm going to watch it tonight." His eyes twinkle with excitement. If I didn't totally love The Hurt Locker so much, I would interject some sort of sexist "What is it with men and war movies anyway?" comment here. But I did. So I won't.

Okay so, what happened next is a perfect illustration of how old people are so much like little kids who are just learning a new skill, it's just uncanny. Here's how it went:

1. I explained to Dad that in order to get the DVD to play on the TV, he has to change the INPUT coming into the TV. To do this, he has to use the TV REMOTE. I showed him where the button is on the remote--all the way down in the left corner (cuz he can't possibly see the word "Input" written above the button.) Check.

2. I showed him where the Play, Rewind, and Stop/Pause buttons are on the DVD PLAYER REMOTE so he can watch the movie at his own speed (which means stopping, rewinding, and starting again so he can replay parts that he misses the first, second, or third times.). Check.

3. Finally, I showed him how to turn the TV back to regular satellite reception so he can watch Animal Planet, the Aviation channel, and PBS, and all the rest of his favorite channels. He has to do this by first using the SATELLITE REMOTE to turn the receiver on, then using the INPUT button on the TV REMOTE so the TV can connect to the satellite receiver. Check.

Then I had him do the whole thing all over again on his own. Check, Check, Check.

I'm walking out of his bedroom when he says, "But why the hell do I need three different remotes to do all that?"

Out of the mouths of babes........and old people...

Dislocations and Disorientation

Somedays it's just hard to write.

Somedays, I simply don't know where to start.

I was in San Diego last weekend to visit my "boys." Some time in April or May, I'm going to be a grandmother for the first time! So I went down to attend my daughter-in-law's baby shower, hang with my other son and his wife, visit with my brother and his wife, relax, take a break, etc.

The day I left, Mom plummeted into a full-on anxiety attack. Her parting words to me, amid sobs, were, "I'm afraid I won't be here when you come home." I hugged her and reassured her that I'd see her Tuesday.

My mother has suffered from anxiety/panic attacks for many, many years. So I know, as many of you probably know too, that what people say in the throes of such an attack is usually irrational. On the other hand, when people get to be a certain age, it seems like they gain some sort of extra sense about "things." Like, there are some things they just know, you know? So even though I dismissed Mom's comment, it stayed with me all weekend. All the way until Monday when I got a phone call from the caregiver...

Turns out, Mom dislocated her hip, again (that's four times now), is in the hospital, and will be staying for a couple of nights. Apparently the ER doc initially got the hip back in, but it promptly popped right back out again, so they had to anesthetize her and manipulate the joint back together a second time.

The first thing I thought of when I got the phone call was........omg, Mom was right--she won't be home when I get back from San Diego. She'll be in the hospital. Did she sense something was going to happen? Was it just coincidence?

Today is Friday. Mom came home from the hospital Tuesday night, but I ended up taking her back to the ER on Wednesday because......I'm not sure I can explain it..........she just wasn't "right." She was confused, disoriented, nauseous. When I called her regular doc for guidance, the nurse told me to take Mom back to the ER to be checked out. I did. They did. All tests and samples showed nothing. Four hours later, I brought Mom back home.

But she's still not right. Still confused. There's still a part of her that "isn't here."

And something else. She's not eating. Wants to stay in bed and not get up. One of the caregivers told me today, it seems like Mom might be "shutting down."

I walked back to Mom's room this afternoon to check on her. The television was on; she was lying in bed, looking straight up at the ceiling, with a sort of frozen stare on her face. I stood there for a couple of minutes and wondered what she might have been thinking. What's going on her head? What does she see? Or, does she, really, see anything?

I don't know what happens next. Will Mom perk up over the next few days? Or is this a new phase in her steadily declining state? Has dementia tightened its unforgiving grip on her aging brain?

Dad is concerned. His patience with her is unbelievable, but I can hear the despair in his voice when he talks to her. It makes me wonder, when Mom passes away will he weep for her like he did for Zeus? Will he grieve the same way?

Maybe Mom will wake up tomorrow bright-eyed and wanting to eat a full breakfast. We'll see....

Pigeons and Puppies, Or: Dad and His Dog....Again.

This is a quick one. I'm still in San Diego, so I'll have to be short.

Last Wednesday. "Field trip" to Port Angeles for dentist and urologist appointments (Mom and and Dad, respectively.). I had to stop at Safeway to get gas. As we're pulling out of the Safeway parking lot, a scrubby, gray pigeon walks across the pavement in front of us. Dad sees it.

"Ohhhhh............look at that poor ole' pigeon!" (Remember Poor Ole Horse? What's up with Dad assuming every animal he sees is 1. poor, and 2. old????)

Anyway, I ignore the pigeon comment, thinking it's just one of Dad's random observations.

Of course, I'm wrong.

Somehow this "poor ole" pigeon magically, amazingly, and completely illogically segues to Dad's "dog that he's never going to have."

So.................woefully..............with the pain of every dogless dog owner whining and trembling in his 94 year old voice, "I need my own dog." (Could you hear it? Could you hear the almost-whimper in that simple little statement, cuz, trust me, it WAS there.

I said nothing.

Mom, on the other hand, piped right in with, "I want a little dog that will curl up in my lap."

Oh thanks Mom.

I still said nothing.

Dad, on the other hand, though he didn't understand anything Mom had just said, came immediately back (and, I might add, somewhat defiantly) with, "You know...................I don't care what anybody says. If some poor ole' (dang! There it is again!) homeless dog shows up at our door............I'm taking it in. [pause] I don't care how flea-bitten it is!"

I said nothing.

Dad was looking at me, waiting for me to say something, which I didn't. Finally, when he couldn't stand it any longer, he swiped my arm with his hand, "What do you think about that?"

And I'm thinking, ohmygod, is he goading me? Is he? Is he honestly goading me into a confrontation over this ridiculous topic.....again??? He is! My father is GOADING me! And I am determined to NOT get drawn into another discussion in which he and I beat another poor-ole-dog-that-doesn't-even-exist-and-will-never-be into the ground. But............he's still staring at me, waiting.....

Time and distance are on my side. By this time, I'm pulling into the handicapped parking space at Mom's dentist's office. I park. I get out to retrieve Mom's walker from the back of the Jeep. I get Mom out of the car, help her into the building. I walk back to the car, where Dad is waiting. I get back into the car, wondering if he's still in goad-mode.

I strap on my seatbelt, start the car, back out of the parking space, and head for the urologist's office. Dad begins to speak, "Well.................." And all I can think is, oh no, here we go. I think I might have even whispered it, knowing full-well Dad wouldn't hear it.

I wait for what I fear is coming next.

".........is Mom out of cottage cheese?"

God bless the short-term memory of the elderly.