Dad's New Look

In recovering from his cataract surgery, my dad has certain practices he must follow. Six times a day, my mother or I must administer drops into his right eye. He had to wear a bandage and a plastic shield the day of the operation, but after a follow-up visit to the doctor on Friday he now only has to wear the bandage and shield at night, wearing these awesome half-face dark glasses the rest of the time. He's also to avoid driving, heavy lifting, and bending down to pick stuff up.

I opted not to tell my parents I'd taken the day off on Friday to help out, as they mentioned some of my dad's new limitations and he'd neither be able to bring in the newspaper or put out the garbage pail. I awoke early on Friday morning as though I were going to work, and took care of both of these tasks. With a full weekend of gigs with my band ahead of me, I had a few other errands I planned to knock out as well, from mowing the lawn to finally mailing in some paperwork regarding a pension from my old company before it was too late. But the newspaper and the garbage were the only things that had to be done immediately, and the rest could wait until after I'd had a few more hours of sleep. I told my dad I was off for the day and going back to bed. I made the mistake of not waiting for him to acknowledge that he'd actually heard me.

“Where's your son?” I heard my mom ask, down the hall in the kitchen.

“He's in the shower, isn't he?”

“No, he's not. I hope he didn't go back to bed.”

“What?! He better not have! He has to leave in FIVE MINUTES!!!”

In a groggy, half-awake state I perceived this conversation moments before two sets of shuffling footsteps made their way to my door. The door flung open, the light flicked on, and an elderly couple frantically shouted in unison for me to wake up.

After a brief exchange of shouting and sleepy mumbling, I managed to convey the fact that I'd taken a vacation day and there was no cause for alarm. The light flicked out, the door closed, and I dozed off to the fading sounds of “I didn't know; did you?”

Just the other day, I remarked to a friend about how working for the past 12 years without any “real” vacations and certainly no free Summers had conditioned me. During my years as a student I could easily sleep until noon during the Summer, but now I find that I wake up at the same time on the weekend that I do during the week, no matter when I've gone to sleep, and it's very hard to sleep in. Thus was I surprised to find that after the sitcom misunderstanding I experienced around 8:30, I had indeed slept another three-and-a-half hours. I had only an hour to finish up some paperwork if I was going to make the 1:00 mail pickup, which I did, and I finished the lawn soon after. By two in the afternoon I could finally relax and have some breakfast, noting that the current package design for Corn Flakes lacked both the green rooster and an actual bowl of cereal, opting instead for a giant Indiana Jones. Cross promotion has always been important to cereal companies, and I've always enjoyed the variety of artwork and puzzles each box offered depending on what was popular at the time. It just seemed like a rare decision for a package design not to include a shot of the actual product contained within.

This was also the point that I noticed my dad's bandages were off, that he and my mom had been to the doctor while I'd slept. At one point in the afternoon, when I came upstairs from hanging laundry, my mom introduced my dad in big sunglasses as ”Ray Charles”. Later in the evening, when he'd put on the bandage and shield to go to sleep, I could swear ”Saul Tigh” was standing in our kitchen. And of course, consummate ‘80s geek that I am, I keep expecting an LED display to activate as type scrawls backwards across his glasses like a Televiper.

Meanwhile, dad is experimenting with his new look as well. “Notice anything about my eye?” he asked while I was concentrating on surviving a level of Dinorun on the “INSANE!” difficulty setting. I hit pause before a wave of DOOM overtook my dino, and studied my father's face. I debated whether or not to tell him the white part of his eye was red, if that was what I was supposed to be looking for, instead suggested that one eye was lower than the other. He smiled, took off the glasses, then proceeded to wave a few fingers where the right lens used to be. He popped it out, anticipating that he won't be needing it anymore for that eye, and now has a pair of glasses with one lens.

When I want to change how I look I'll usually shave my head and/or grow sideburns. It's nice to know that when I get older, there are a lot more interesting options...