I arrived in Ohio the middle of last week to watch my parents while my brother and his wife left town for a bit.
After my daughter moved to the Charlotte area last year, we lost our built-in pet-sitter, so Don remained in Atlanta. Our dog isn’t so good in the car. He tolerates two-lane roads, but panics on interstates.
The cat travels fine, but my sister-in-law is allergic. The real problem, though, is the squirrel.
Yeah. We still have the squirrel.
Rudy seems to have no interest in moving out on his own, and after seeing two squirrels get snatched by a hawk in our yard (there’s a nest two doors over), we extended his lease indefinitely.
My brother said we were welcome to bring Rudy along, but I envisioned the path of destruction he might have caused on their very pretty and extraordinarily clean house, and began looking for somewhere that would board him.
This might come as a surprise to those, like me, who expected a burg as big as Atlanta to have squirrel-sitting services, but apparently, there’s no such thing.
Cats and dogs? Not a problem.
Blue-tongued skink? We’ve got you covered.
A squirrel? Out of luck.
So, I hopped that plane all alone while Don tended our herd.
“Your folks are pretty low maintenance,” my sister-in-law said. “They sleep or watch TV most of the time. It shouldn’t be bad.”
And it both isn’t and is.
My dad, who is now 85, has always been a morning person, while my mom, 87, is just the opposite. It’s interesting how, in the earlier half of each day, Dad is clear-headed and accommodating and chattier than I can ever recall, while Mom is a bit stubborn and seems to be in a fog. In the evenings, it’s just the opposite, with Mom being bright-eyed and talkative and Dad somewhat adrift. Neither has dementia; it’s more like their stations get extra static at certain times of the day.
Dad has the best attitude about accepting the indignities and frustrations life serves up, while Mom — who spent all but the past few years being the most flexible and easy-going person you’d ever meet — apparently used up her lifetime allotment of compliance.
“That woman is stubborn,” Dad says, with an admiring grin, as Mom leaves the dinner table and heads back to their room, miffed because I asked her to lie on her side while I put drops in her ear.
“She’s a real character,” Dad says.
The highest compliment my Dad will ever pay a person is to call them a character. He has two camps in his world. There are the characters, and there are those he finds dull.
Mom is the queen of the first.
He brags about how much she reads.
“Books. Magazines. Cereal boxes,” he says. “Anything with words is fair game.”
Now that others take care of the pesky dailies like cooking, cleaning and laundry, she’s free to consume as many words as she can digest.
Dad and I sit at the table and listen to her rummaging around loudly in their room. A few minutes later, she returns. All sweetness and light.
“How do you solve a problem like Maria?” Mom sings. “How do you catch a cloud and pin it down?”
She sits next to me at the table and tilts her head far to one side, then slides the ear drops toward me.
It is now her decision. Her timeframe.
And then, in this game they’ve played all my life, Dad shoves his dirty dishes over to her side of the table.
Mom smiles and shoves them to mine.
“What did I tell you?” Dad said. “That woman is a character.”
“So are you, Dad,” I said.
So are you.
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June 27, 2021 at 02:00AM
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Smell the Coffee: Queen of the Characters | Life & Arts | wvgazettemail.com - Charleston Gazette-Mail
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