Hot Day

part 4

My father walks every day--EVERY day--rain or shine.

Today was not only one of the shine days, but it was also one of the hot days. The very hot days. I try to pass along this information to him, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from dealing with my father, it’s that I can’t deal with my father.

“Pop,” I tell him, “it’s hot outside.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Sure it is.”

“No, it’s not.”

“I was just outside. It’s hot.”

“It feels cool to me.”

“It feels cool to you because we’re inside the house. Outside, it’s hot.”

But my father isn’t really listening to me. He’s trying on the new pair of Nike walking shoes I’ve just brought him from Tucson.

“Yeah,” he tells himself, “these feel good. It’s just what I needed.”

He stands up after putting them on and does a little high-stepping around the island in the kitchen.

“They fit perfect,” he tells me. “I’m going out for a walk.”

I try to distract him.

“You know, pop, my wife will be down in a few minutes. You don’t want to wait for breakfast before you go on your walk?”

“What?”

“You don’t want to wait for breakfast first?”

“Are you going to make it for me?”

“My wife will be down in a few minutes. She can make us both breakfast.”

I’ve learned that if I can distract him long enough, he’ll forget about going on his walk, and will settle down and watch TV or go take his morning nap, but there’s no distracting him today.

“Nah,” he says. “I’ll go on my walk first.”

He’s really excited about trying out his new shoes. He’s like a big kid.

I’m really regretting driving to Tucson and buying him those Nike’s. No good deed goes unpunished, but no good deed also causes you a lot of inconvenience as well.

So he goes.

Meanwhile, my wife comes downstairs.

“Are you hungry for breakfast?” she asks.

I have a very beautiful wife. I look at her, and she’s wearing some cotton pajamas that are a size too big. The sleeves go past her wrists and halfway down her hand, and the pajama bottoms drag on the ground. She looks awfully cute.

“Well... I am hungry,” I tell her.

She knows I’m not talking about breakfast.

“Where’s dad?” she asks, bringing me back to reality.

“He went out on his walk,” I admit.

“So he can be back at any time?”

“Yeah,” I admit that, too, knowing where this is going.

“So you let him go out on a walk?”

“I didn’t let him. He went.”

“But it’s hot.”

“He didn’t think so.”

“It’s very hot.”

“He thought it was cool.”

“Yeah, inside the house it’s cool, but outside it’s hot.”

I’m starting to get agitated.

“Sweetheart, you know him. If there was a way I could have kept him from going out on his walk, then I would have kept him from going out on his walk.”

That’s the thing about my father. He affects so many aspects of my life. My wife and I are sniping at each other, not because we’re actually irritated at each other, but because our lives are essentially put on hold. I can’t kiss my wife good morning without him sticking his nose between us and asking if his dog has been fed yet.

I look at it this way: I have a window of opportunity age-wise to do certain things, and that window is closing way too fast for my taste. By inviting my father into my home to live with us, I’ve limited the things I can do. I can’t hike every day the way I would like, and leave my wife to deal with my father all by herself. He would drive her nuts. So I hike when I can, and I wait for him to come back from his walks the rest of the time.

“Should I start breakfast, or what?”

“I would guess ‘or what?’.”

So we make the best of a bad situation. I make us two cups of coffee. She likes to add sugar and cream. I like mine black. I grab the morning newspaper, and she picks up a mystery book that she’s been dying to read. We go outside to the front patio, where there’s shade and it’s still cool.

I sit down, and single out the Sports Section. My wife sits down, and opens her book to the first page.

And that’s the exact moment my father comes back.

“Man,” he says, wiping his forehead with the baseball cap he was wearing. “It’s hot out there.”

“Did you have a nice walk, dad?” my wife asks him, trying to be nice.

He ignores her question completely.

“Do you have anthing cold to drink?” he asks her. “Man, it was hot. That sun was burning.”

My wife gets up and goes to get him something cold to drink.

“I told you,” I said.

“What?”

“I told you it was hot.”

“You told me it was hot?”

“Yeah.”

“When did you tell me that?”

“Before you left.”

He ignores what I’ve just said. I don’t know if he doesn’t hear what we say, or if he just ignores the things he doesn’t want to acknowledge.

“I should have had breakfast first,” he says, shaking his head, and sitting down with me. “I could have gone for a walk later in the afternoon, when the sun cooled down.”

He looks at his new shoes, and shakes his head some more.

“You know, son,” he tells me. “I don’t know about these shoes. They hurt my feet.”