Identity protection

Each day here I get up early before Mom and Grandpa and I write till they appear, then I try to be social or help out as necessary. We don’t seem to do much. There’s always some nurse or therapist coming over to the house, or an appointment for Grandpa to go to…. He putters about, inside and out of the house, always on the move. Today for the first time he got about mostly without his walker.

A nurse came over in the morning and he was uncooperative…. He doesn’t like strangers telling him what to do, even if it’s for a short examination. Especially if the person is a woman. He’s better with one of the physical therapists, who’s a man…. The nurse told Mom and Rosemary that he should be making his own meals and be taking his myriad pills on his own. That is if he hopes to eventually be able to stay in the house alone.

After the nurse left, Grandpa asked about a clasp knife that’s been missing since he was in the rehabilitation hospital. “I’ve had that knife for twenty-six years,” he complained. Rosemary said she didn’t know where it was, and he said, “Well, find it.” He blames her. After further nagging she snapped, and there was a brief bit of shouting, and then he went out back to the patio…. And then Rosemary and Mom and I looked through likely places in the house, not for the first time, but unsuccessfully. We did note that he had moved the cash that he kept in his top dresser drawer and that Rosemary had been using to make necessary purchases for him…. The problem Grandpa has with his two kids who live locally, Rosemary and Mike, is that he’s failed to cultivate goodwill over the years. It seems you need plenty of that for such periods of illness and decline.

In the middle of the morning I went off for a short walk. It was already in the mid-eighties, heading again for the upper nineties. These sedentary days make me uneasy…. I don’t know that I need to walk twenty miles a day, but something more than I’ve managed so far….

Back at the house, Grandpa spent the afternoon on what Mom calls his favorite activity, “jury-rigging.” He was out in the garage making a sort of brace to hold a small paper shredder in the mouth of a white plastic trash can. Earlier he had told me to carry out the trash can to the recycling bin; it was full of papers from his office. But I noticed that among the papers were copies of old tax documents with his social security number on many of them. I brought the bin back in and said something, and he remembered he had a shredder somewhere and went in search of it…. A full day’s project ensued.

In the afternoon I spent some time at Starbuck’s for their wifi. A couple sat at the table next to me, and I soon sussed out that this was their first meeting. They were both in their thirties, both largish people, and they seemed a little nervous but to be enjoying themselves. I overheard just bits—I was actually occupied trying and failing to upload photos to the weblog, but still, I have ears. The woman said something like, “But I thought, ‘it’ll grow back, right?” and she laughed and I looked up and noted her short hair. In a more serious moment she said, “Of course my daughter comes first, that goes without saying….” And, “I’m not interested in friends with benefits sort of situations….” And, “At my first wedding….” He wore a baseball cap and had a goatee, and his jeans were the sort that come with holes.

Back at the house I tried watching some of the Olympics, but the stresses of competition sometimes overwhelm me. Gymnastics is almost as bad as ice skating—I’m just waiting anxiously for the mistake that will demolish four or more years of preparation.

Last night Grandpa didn’t sleep, and he spent a number of the small hours doing noisy things in the kitchen, which is right off the living room, which is where I’m sleeping or trying to. It’s his house, so, you know, go ahead. But tonight I slept in the van in the backyard, and that’s more like home anyway.