Call of the Wild

Let's review.

Dad is 94 years old. He uses a walker. He can barely see out of his one "good" eye, and he can barely hear out of his one "good" ear. His bones are as brittle as glass, and yet, in spite of all his obvious handicaps, my father still (maybe moreso?) acts as if he's a combination of John Wayne, Jack Kerouac, and Jack London. You know....fearless, rugged, unstoppable, immortal. Oh yeah, and Dad wants to adopt every homeless dog on the planet. Remember all of that?

Okay. So.........it snowed today in Sunny Sequim. We got a good four inches of really slushy slippery stuff. Good day for stew, or soup, or chowder, or tea and a good book, or in my case, tea and writing a blog.

I'm in the sun room. Dad's in the living room. The dogs are outside. The dogs start barking. Probably at the neighbor's dog, since that's the only dog close enough to matter to another dog. The dogs are barking, so I get up to go let them back into the house. But Dad shouts out to me, kind of almost frantically, "THERE'S A DOG OUT THERE! DO YOU SEE IT? THERE'S A DOG!"

There was no dog anywhere. My guess is, the neighbors momentarily let their dog out, then brought him inside again. But none of that mattered to Dad. He was undaunted. He was on a mission. And he was already out of his recliner and heading over to the door.

"There's no dog out there Dad," I told him, closing the door.

And what my father said next.......well...... it, along with a few other little incidents here and there since Mom has been out of the house, make both me and my brother (who was just here for a visit) wonder if Dad is venturing into a new chapter of his geriatric-ness. Here's what happened...

Dad comes over to the door, with pinpoint focus mind you, reaches for the handle and says to me, "I'm going to go rescue that dog."

.........uhhhh...........WHAT?! (Here's where I do one of those Daffy Duck Double-Takes. I have no idea how to write it descriptively. You'll just have to imagine it--Daffy Duck violently shaking his beaked head back and forth in disbelief over something.)

And Dad says again, now a little closer to the door, "I'm going to go out and rescue that dog. "

Did I mention the snow? The slippery, slushy snow? The brittle bones? The walker? The snow?

I put my hand on the door, preventing Dad from going anywhere. "DAD! There's no dog out there, and besides that....." I start to explain ALLLLLLL of the reasons why it's completely ludicrous and insane for him to............oh geez I can't even say it. You get my drift.

Anyway. He doesn't go out. I leave the room, but he stands there for a couple of minutes, studying the outside for the supposedly poor old lost dog--Buck, or Nanook, or Lassie, or Old Yeller--that he was going to risk life and limb for (literally) traipsing through the snow (with his walker) to rescue. He wheels over to the alcove window and stares out some more, still searching. He finally gives up and goes back to his chair, picks up the Sunday paper and resumes his daily read.

And, as you can see, I'm back with my tea.