Out of the Calaboose

Despite years of practise squelching a redhead’s temper, I still find it hard to control sometimes. When the Homecare Organizer Woman arrived in Dad’s hospital room on Thursday, she started speaking to me instead of Dad.

“Dad can speak for himself,” I said mildly. “He’s completely aware of what’s going on and he’s quite realistic.”

Brief confusion covered her but she made a neat recovery and, among other things, asked Dad, “Before your fall, were you able to help around the house?”

“Oh yes!” replied Dad, pride oozing from every weakened pore. “I’m the Dishes Man!”

How quickly anger can turn to laughter! I kept a straight face but my mind ran in lines of lunatic hysteria. When Dad retired, he decided he ought to take on some household chores. Doing the dishes seemed like a good option since his culinary skills don’t extend past pouring dry cereal into a bowl. And so the fun began.

Dad didn’t rinse, perhaps believing it was a time-consuming and unnecessary step.

Mom gently mentioned that getting soapy residue off the dishes was, in fact, necessary, if they wanted to avoid stomach and bowel complaints.

Dad announced that with many years of university education behind him he didn’t need instruction on how to wash dishes.

Mom, with uncommon heat, asked if Dad was implying that the job she’d performed so admirably for well over 40 years required no learning and no skills.

Dad started rinsing the dishes. But he didn’t dry them properly so the cupboards filled with little patches of slime and you had to be careful the plates didn’t slide out of your hands and onto the floor when you took them out. And, of course, if there was company or a meal requiring a large number of cooking utensils, it wasn’t “fair” and others needed to take care of the towering, soiled remains. Sadly, for most of the last year, Dad hasn’t felt well enough or strong enough to be Dishes Man and I miss the hidden pitfalls of my parents’ cupboards.

I mentioned this to Mom as we drove up to the hospital yesterday to fetch Dad, light raindrops misting the windshield. After we’d laughed a bit excessively – whistling in the dark, I think – I added how H.O. Woman had looked impressed at what a liberated man lay in front of her.

“Didn’t you tell her he’s Trash Man, too?” Mom asked.

I’d forgotten about that. Mom’s in charge of washing food containers of every description, including tin cans and their carefully severed lids but, every Friday, Dad used to empty the waste baskets. When I stayed with them during the summers, Dad’s garbage routine drove me up the wall. He actually sifted through every receptacle in which I might have discarded something and then came to me, offending article in hand.

“I know it’s a small thing, Annie,” he’d say, a microscopic shred of candy wrapper nestled in his palm, “But I burn paper of all kinds. Please remember to put it in the fireplace.”

Or, “I know it doesn’t seem important to you,” – said with a scrap of toothpaste box nipped between finger and thumb – “But cardboard gets flattened and put in the blue bin under the kitchen sink.”

“Look,” I said to them one morning after I’d been taken to task for throwing a dental floss container into the wrong bin, “You guys already wash and iron your garbage. Why don’t you start gift-wrapping it and attaching happy notes for the recycling crew?”

They didn’t laugh.

When Mom and I entered Dad’s room yesterday, the warmth of our giggles settled comfortably in our bellies, Dad was excited but still convinced fate would intervene and prevent his escape from the calaboose.

“And ghastly through the drizzling rain/On the bald street breaks the blank day,” he quoted. “Tennyson. In Memoriam.”

There’s really no response to a remark like that so we started helping him dress.

“I hope you haven’t told anyone, Bean,” he said to Mom when we’d finished and he sat resplendent in a chair, the nasty blue hospital gown pooled at his feet. “Otherwise they’ll get one of those awful cards and make everyone sign it and they’ll all say how sorry they are and all that JUNK!”

Did I mention that my Dad is not always an easy man to deal with? Before Mom and I could muster our scattered wits, John, the guy from Medi-Van Wheelchair Service arrived. He sported a rooster comb hairdo that rose in eight-inch, fire engine red spikes and marched from the midpoint above his forehead to the nape of his neck. His ears and eyebrows bristled with hardware.

It was too much for Mom. She picked up Dad’s discarded breakfast tray. “I’ll just get rid of this, shall I?” she muttered and scurried out the door before those happily settled giggles came rushing back to the fore.

I’m made of sterner stuff. Years of classroom teaching have inured me to even the wildest of coiffures. I do remember, though, when I first encountered spikes back in the late 80s. For several days I gave them surreptitious glances and my mind worked overtime. I wondered why this boy’s spikes stayed upright even in a stiff breeze while my hair, plastered and pinned, fell into limp strands at the slightest provocation. How did he sleep? I pictured pillows with strategic slots in them. Finally I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, Jason?” I ventured.

“It’s gonna be a hair question, Jason!” the class chorused.

Jason, a charming young man, smiled at me and said, “Not at all.”

“Um...how do you get our hair to stay upright like that?”

“I use egg whites,” he explained with enthusiasm, “And simple vegetable dyes. It takes me about half an hour every morning but the end results are worth it, don’t you think?”

Of course!

John proved to be as charming and gracious as Jason before him. He was careful and gentle with my Dad although we had a truly horrifying moment getting him up the steps to the front door. Even today, I go cold thinking about it.

There are only four steps, but they’re higher than average and slant slightly downwards so you’re working against gravity as you ascend. Between the second and third steps Dad quietly said, “I’m not going to make it. Catch me,” and slowly collapsed. John braced him from behind and I, from the step above, kept a firm grip on his arm and pulled steadily against the weight of his fall. Dad rallied, fortunately, and made it the rest of the way into the house – and bed – without further mishap.

Bring on the daffodils and cherry blossoms!