Hints of What was to Come: My Parents at 75

Daily writing prompt

What were your parents doing at your age?

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My parents were still thinking it was funny when my mother put the butter in the dishwasher. They had no idea what was down the road for them. How much covering up my dad would do, how many excuses he’d make, how many things they would quit doing to avoid embarrassment. Their lives shrank like an all-cotton t-shirt washed in hot water. Alzheimer’s Disease. My dad called it. A.D.

My dad didn’t have any help. He negotiated many years of my mother’s decline using the protection of their routine and his own ingenuity to keep going. To prevent her from driving, he said her license had expired and that the state was requiring everyone to take a written test for a new one. Then he got the drivers ed manual and they sat down every night after dinner to study. When she could answer all the questions at the end of each chapter, she’d be ready, he said. But she never could and then she decided studying was boring and so they quit. He never had to wrestle her keys away. It was the state, after all, making up all these new rules.

I loved him for that. It was cagey. And kind.

He stopped taking her places where her feelings could be hurt. That included the golf course where my mother would pick up other people’s balls and put them in her pocket. And the local Bill Knapp restaurant because she’d put her head down on the table and go to sleep. Instead, their house became the safe space. He read spy novels while she unfolded and refolded all the towels in the linen closet. He washed dishes while she put Christmas bows on cans of green beans and boxes of macaroni on the shelves in the basement. Every night he played the organ, all the old songs from his band days, and she sat in her chair with the old brocade slipcover, with her hands folded, listening to every note.

He created a tiny peaceful life for her. She would have done the same for him if that’s what he needed. I’m sure of it.