March 12, 2013

  • Back

    I'm home.

    I'm safe.

    And my father is still alive. Meaning, he survived my care.

    To skate lightly over the sense of premonition: once the trauma over insurance was over, my drive down and back and relatively uneventful. For me. I happened to be headed south in I-65 just a few miles south of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, when the traffic stopped. Dead. And moved ahead 17 inches. And stopped. I spent 4 hours and 17 minutes on the same mile of highway. I played games on my Kindle, head-danced to the radio, muttered about the inconsideration of whoever and whatever was holding me up, fussed, fidgeted... Both lanes of the highway were closed from 11:15 am to whenever anyone could move again (I got there 2 hours later, moved again at 4:17--other people were still sitting in the opposite lane when I took off). Six people died, three more were injured, and there were accidents in both lanes. The reality was ugly, but as often happens, it was gone by the time I got there. I don't know that my fussing and fretting had anything to do with the reality of that accident, which, other than stopping me in my tracks for four hours, had no direct effect on my life.

    Well. I suffered minor distress over the number of people stampeding the various pit stops. 

    As for my father: he is getting older. Life--simple getting up, eating, walking from here to there, staying awake for any length of time--is getting harder. He is 87. He appears to be having issues with his legs. They don't work, they're not reliable, they give out...I'm not sure exactly what happens. He was not a fountain of information when he was 50: when the information is mostly about ways he is failing, he remains a proud and stubborn man and I am not going to hear it. No amount of prodding gets much farther than his condition, which remains steadfastly, "Fair to middling."

    I kept him company. I kept him fed. I kept his laundry  up.

    And because I went to Alabama, I got sick. I have no idea how those people down there survive: I cross the Winston County line and I have bronchitis.

    Anyway. I am home again. At my own computer, with my dogs (who are leaving as I speak to go to work with Nancy.) I need to take the rental car back. Tomorrow I teach 5th graders about gourds. And then my normal life resumes. Or, perhaps, this IS my normal life.

    In the next room, the dogs are sitting for the door to open. This is Nancy's training she had undertaken since she gets tired of being trampled every time she opens the door.

    I need to contact Annie's trainer: we have fallen out of sequence and need to get that going again.

    first things first: the car.