A Parlor Trick

What have I learned most recently? Have you an aging parent with short-term memory tremors? Well I have! It can be most disconcerting. It can be a painful experience on a couple of levels. One is obvious that’s the one where you have to listen to the same conversation and questions over and over.

You can find yourself losing your patience and tolerance. Anger is the other by-product that is followed by guilt that you actually got angry.

But I think that I have found a method to circumvent a big chunk of emotional upset. What I do is first track the questions and stories are and commit them to memory.  Next I repeat the same questions and questions and give the same answers in well-paced intervals, before my dad has a chance to ask them again. I now empty my negativity towards him and give him exactly what he needs

Re enforcing what his memory is lacking. Now I am free from impatience and intolerance and best of all anger and guilt. This now makes my visit a positive one and I can spend more time with his long-term memory, which seems intact and I learn things I never knew as a child.  And I can rediscover a deeper love for my father.  A parlor trick maybe but an effective one.  There are no lies just repetitions and I can live with that.

The Excavator

My stepson has been engaged for two days now excavating the basement. The basement, which has fallen prey to capturing everything and everything, we have collected over the past seven years.  There are so many things residing there between books and retired furniture and electronics and my ego-laden trophies from my tenure at my last avocation.

Needless to say he has the ability to remove some of the nostalgia that I would cling to had I been in charge of this project. It’s almost as if he employs a logic I cannot and I thank him for that and to be able to be rid of things we haven’t touched in years.  When I look at some of the items in this trove of individual memories some are hold onto able and most others he has launched to the end of the driveway where treasure seekers or the men that collect refuse have done what they do. 

I am delighted to lighten the load that will still be monumental when we retire from this museum that my wife designed and built with the skill of her artistry and devotion.

Thank you son and I am glad I stayed out of it because I would only have gummed up the works by stopping and staring at things that no longer can occupy space in my head or space in our basement. 

The Thaw

The life of a Step-Dad when Summer time is nigh feels a little more claustrophobic these days.  Maybe I am anticipating less time to do the things I became accustomed to over the early part of 2010.  Certainly writing was job one with me but now that I am back in the insurance game time will grow short when it comes down to my Microsoft word and I. 

My son and I have patched up our little freeze over my posting here and I guess it’s just both of our natures to let things go especially since we have grown closer than he ever could with his biological Dad.  I take no grandiosity in that statement because I have always said that his father has dropped the ball repeatedly over the last 12 years and he made my job most uncomfortable at times. However, I barely give him a second thought these days because I remember my A.A. idiom of being helpless changing people, places or things. In his case he remains an enigma I have no intention of trying to solve.

In any case my fondness for my daughter in law grows day by day and I have this strong paternal feeling about her.  This young woman is always consistent in her mood, demeanor and shyness.  I love her like a daughter I never had.  I am so glad my son found her and I know they love each other even during their little spats about usually possession of the computer or what the ingredients are to be in their daily meals.

Somnolent State of Mind

Peace has descended on my blended family’s household. I knew that time would heal any open wound, including my own.  As I ready myself for departure for the day my family remains in the somnolent state.  It’s quite all right because they depend on me as much as I depend on them albeit in a different way but of no less import to me. 

Maybe I am not just a figurehead as I had selfishly imagined.  Maybe I am more like a loving father to them and it gives my wife the security that her adult chicks are out of harms way in my care. 

My Step Son the Cook

My stepson is making dinner tonight. I know he takes pride in whatever he does. I hope it comes out the way he wants it to. I will eat it and enjoy it but it has to pass muster with him before he feels good about his foray into the culinary arts. 

Oh oh my daughter in law has arrived on the kitchen scene and I didn’t hear what she said but it might be that although my son’s attempts at feeding us all are well-intentioned timing and portions might not have been well executed. I am glad my head is not on the spit right now.  My wife has descended and she will never ever chide her son or anyone for that matter for attempting something new even if it doesn’t come out exactly to specifications.

He’s using the right ingredients: Organic chicken and fresh vegetables soaked in some healthy oil. I don’t know what brought this on but I welcome it just the same.

If it were I it would be tomfoolery, as I would be asking my wife to do more things for me than if she made it herself.  I will stick to driving and answering the phone. 

  And at this late date I have no interest in becoming a chef, maybe next life. No not then either.

Post Script
The meal was not only good it was great. I gobbled up the veggies and the chicken was done to perfection. 

My Stepson's Commencement

In my wildest dreams I never thought I would be sitting in the bleachers in a college gym and be waiting for my stepson to come into the hall for his graduation.  It seemed just a blink of an eye ago that I was in St. Patrick’s church watching him with his mom graduating from 8^th grade. 

Next to my wife and daughter in law we try to get comfortable on the hardwood and not far to my right of me my ears are filled with a oversized middle aged woman engaged in non-stop cackling that is just not to be  believed.  The filter on my ear is trying to blur the sounds but the only thing that will shut her oral cavity is the start of this ceremony.

My son’s biological father is somewhere near and he has claimed ‘lunch’ rights after the proceedings in his typical “grandstand” fashion.  I can’t let that old wound be re-opened, as the only one to suffer will be me.  And after all today is about my son’s graduation, not about how I feel.

I look sideways at my daughter in law who has been the counter-balancing agent to any of my hurt feelings over the past two years. She’s quiet, dutiful in her own way, self effacing but exhibits the strength of character when it’s called on and of course she is beautiful and I must remember to hug her sometime during the course of the day. 

The cackling just kicked into 5^th gear and unlike the drone of 200 mph racecars going by this woman could easily be heard over that din.  Ooh the ceremony is starting and her mouth is finally shut. 

As the music commences and the graduates start to parade in my eyes are being challenged as I fight back the tears of the unknowing.  There is a proud feeling I am experiencing something only a father might know.  

Blood Lines

It’s funny in a way that I have little control over my life here.  The only person that has my agenda as part of hers is my lovely wife.  Everyone else is a just short-term tenant that will go on their way eventually.  Even if I love them in ways they don’t understand I will not try change whether they see my true intention or not. 

Step dads like me with no ties of blood can bleed internally when I am shunned in my own home for feelings any normal human would feel.  It’s okay I will weather this storm as I have done all others. Let it rain because as Annie once said: The sun will come out tomorrow.