Cluster

My friend texted me that my mom was locked out of the house. My friend said that my mom was at her mom’s house (which is across from my parents’ house). My friend lives two hours from her mom, and I live 1500 miles from both. Communications technology these days is awesome.

I knew mom had gone off to a church meeting that morning, so this scenario was plausible. I called to see if mom had gotten back in the house. When my dad answered the phone and said she was there, I knew all was better and moved on to another matter. I asked if mom had a doctor appointment for her bruised shoulder.

He said: “I called this morning. Absolutely a crime. A damn shame.”

“Where’s the appointment?” I asked.

“You know where McDonald’s is on highway so-and-so?”

Me: “What’s the doctor’s name?”

“If you’ll wait a minute!” Pause. “You turn next to the McDonald’s. It’s on the left.”

Pause. “I called this morning. And then some girl comes on the phone. Uh, what’s here name? I put it some place. Where is it?”

Is it an orthopedic doctor?

“Proctologist I think it is. I can’t read it. Where are my glasses? I’m going nuts around here!”

The Glass Castle

My sister is a flight attendant, and someone left a copy of the book The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls, on the airplane my sister was working on one day. She picked it, took it home, and read it. Then she gave me a copy for my birthday. When I called to thank her, she said, “I thought our family was weird, but this book beats it.”

If you haven’t read it, The Glass Castle, now a movie, is so interesting and well-written and easy to read and tells a remarkable, true story. The writer’s parents thought they were being good parents, but the children were left to fend for themselves in dangerous, filthy, poverty conditions.

The book was a touch-point for my sister and I to start talking about our family and some of the strange things our parents did. It opened a dialog where we remembered events and things my dad had done when we were growing up that we’d never discussed before. My sister married when she was 18, nine months after graduating from high school. She left home and we never talked about our dad’s odd behavior. She didn’t have to deal with it anymore on an ongoing basis.

She gave me The Glass Castle in 2006. Since then, she and I have had more phone calls than ever (we live in different states) —lots of comments about what went on at family get togethers. And now that my dad’s been in the hospital a few times, we text about that, and now the dementia diagnosis.

Phone, Neighbors, Soldering Iron

I called my parents on Friday afternoon at my usual time. The call went straight to voice mail: odd. I called again that evening and the same thing happened. So, I called my sister to see if she had talked to them that day. No. So, I called my parents’ neighbor and they volunteered to walk over and ring my parents’ doorbell and check on them. Such nice people.

About 15 minutes later, my dad called me from his cell phone. The neighbors had come to their door and told them I was trying to get them on the phone. My parents were in bed – at 8:30!

Their phone (landline) was not working. When they picked it up, they heard a buzzing sound. So, instead of going back to bed and dealing with it in the morning, my dad called the phone company. 

He called me about an hour later to tell me. He said, “I asked the man where he was. He said Texas. I don’t understand why they aren’t here in town!”

I said, “It’s Friday night, Daddy. The office is closed.”

Anyway, my dad put in a ticket and they said someone would be out to fix the phone Monday because apparently the problem was in the phone, not the line.

Sunday night my dad called me and I could tell from the caller ID on my cell phone that he was calling from his landline. “Hey,” I said. “Looks like you got your phone fixed.”

He said, “The problem was the battery charger in the wireless phone. I happened to hear it making a noise, so I looked at it and realized it was the problem. I had to take the battery pack out and solder some batteries together to get the right charge to replace what was in there. Your mother held the wires while I soldered them.”

I’m listening to this nonsense from 1500 miles away. We hung up and I texted my brother-in-law to let him know what happened. He said the battery packs are kind of expensive and my dad probably didn’t want to pay for one. He knew he could make one on his own, so he did.

I’m just glad no firetruck was needed.

Four Squares of Carpet

In my parents’ garage are four squares of carpet – one for each car tire. My dad likes to back into the garage and land each tire on a carpet square so the rubber doesn’t sit on the painted concrete floor. Their driveway is uphill.

When he was recovering from a broken leg a few years ago, he’d sit in the garage and wait for mom to come home so he could watch her parking the car and make sure she got all four tires on the carpet squares.

Oil Change, circa 2014

My dad has always changed the oil in his cars. It’s one of his obsessions.

“Every 3000 miles, Susan. You need to get that oil out!” he’d scold after I moved away from home. “I’m telling you!”

He still changes his own oil. He owns a 1992 Toyota Corolla and a 2005 Hyundai Sante Fe. In March 2014, he had set up the equipment in the garage to change the oil in the Toyota. This involves several bricks that elevate a wooden plank. He backs the car onto the wooden plank to elevate it so he can get under the car to open the oil pan. (I’m questioning the direction of the car in this situation. Wouldn’t you need the front of the car elevated because that’s where the oilpan is? Seems like he used to drive the car onto the bricks so the engine would be elevated, but that’s not what happened in this situation. And maybe dementia is the reason for this.) It involves a helper: his trusty wife.

One evening, I got a text from my sister: “Don’t call them. Something happened. I’ll call you later.”

Very strange.

When she called she explained that my dad had backed the car up most of the way onto the bricks but wanted to correct the car’s position on the bricks. Instead of changing gears, he hit the gas with the car still in reverse, drove over the bricks, and through the garage wall into the basement stairwell on the other side of the wall. A little more gas and the car would have gone down the stairs backwards.

I don’t know what happened then. I never got the details. I don’t want to know. He was able to “drive” the car out of the stairwell. The car wasn’t hurt, nor was he. But I’m sure his pride was hurt no matter how much he may have blamed mom for not telling him how close he was or something to deflect guilt from himself.

In the end, the car was fine, the oil was changed, the wall was fixed, and life continued.

A couple years went by and when I was visiting, for some reason, the subject of their homeowner’s insurance policy came up. My dad, mom, and I started looking through their papers and found a letter about the policy. I called about it and found that they hadn’t paid it for two years. The last activity on the account was making a claim when my dad had driven the car through the wall. So, they paid it and were ready for the next event.

Do You Like Cheese?

My dad started asking me this question about 10 or 15 years ago. It slipped into phone conversation easily since I was so used to him asking odd questions. And I was probably not really listening anyway.

But when I heard it one time, I replied: “you know I like cheese, Daddy.” Then he would continue talking about his latest cheese obsession.

Another weird question he’d ask was: “do you have Hardee’s out there?” (I live out of state, 1500 miles from my parents.)

“Daddy, you know Hardee’s is a nation-wide chain,” I said. “Of course there are Hardee’s here.”

“Oh that’s right,” he replied.

What was that all about?

Why am I writing this?

There is so much and it’s cluttering my mind. If I write it, I don’t have to remember it.

I thought of doing a comedy sketch about all the weird things my dad does. I thought of writing a magazine article about his cluster of behavior issues. I just started writing one day and it flowed out of me. I’d written blogs before and liked it so I started this one. It’s a good way to organize my thoughts and keep my writing for posterity and who knows, maybe one day it will seem comical. It helps to get weird and upsetting conversations with my dad off my chest and out of my mind. At the least, it is documenting demented and/or controlling and/or obsessive behavior.

If anyone ever wants examples of his behavior, I’ve got it.