Perspectives, Dan
I’ve imagined what it feels like to be my dad.
I wonder if I stumbled upon more truth that I thought.
I wonder if it’s what being in New York City is like.
Time feels like a blur. I know I’m alive, but I certainly don’t always feel like I am. I feel like I’m stumbling about, zombie-like, living a dream, wading through some fog.
I see people wandering the streets, but I feel like I’m in some other reality where New York is a ghost town except I’m the ghost but still have to avoid running into all these bodies of the living lest I want to feel their righteous wrath.
I can be doing a number of things. Having a drink with friends. Having a picnic in the park. Having breakfast with my relatives. I have done all of those things.
Lessons in the word 'maa faan'
“Daniel?”
“Yes?”
“I think I am going to cancel my surgery.”
I drop whatever I’m doing. “Why?”
“I just don’t want to do it. I don’t think I need to do it.”
“But your knee hurts, doesn’t it?”
“I can live with it. Surgery is just too maa faan.”
I think about explaining to her that her knee has been killing her, and that she will have to have her knee replaced at some point in the future; she might as well do it now, while I still live with her. At some point, I do explain this to her.
But right now, I’m just too tired and I go get something to drink. Probably whiskey.
“Please don’t cancel it,” is all I say.
Getting my legs back
I’m in the Big Apple. It’s 3 P.M.
Which means it’s noon back in California, back where my parents are. They should be awake, and if all is normal, my dad should be sitting on his usual couch—doing nothing, just sitting there, like normal.
But I don’t know if things are ‘normal,’ at least not for sure.
I pull out my phone and open an app that lets me view the two security cameras I installed inside my parents’ house; one that views the kitchen, and one for the living room. I bought the cameras thinking that if I could check in and see with my own eyes, that my parents are okay, then that would free me to be wherever I wanted to be in the world.
In a sense, that’s what I’m in New York for, to answer the question: “Could I live away from my parents?”
The view loads, the one of the living room. My dad is there, sitting on the couch, legs propped up on the coffee table.
And then I swap cameras to see the kitchen.
And in that instant, I get the answer I’m looking for.
Marrying up
I know what my dad would do without me, or at least, without me in the house. He’d be in some sort of an assisted-living center and I’d go visit him once or twice a week. I’d bring a book and sit with him for a few hours. Probably wear super powerful noise-cancelling headphones while he watches the news. Maybe take him to “Pandas” every once in a while.
But what would my dad do without my mom?
Being my dad’s caregiver is really only the latest in a string of choices my mom has made in their married life, choices that put someone else way above herself. My mom has always taken care of my dad, with the big things (she was the breadwinner of the two and ensured their financial stability) and with the little things (she did the cooking and the dishes). The one thing my dad contributed to the logistical part of their relationship was filing taxes. Not a small detail for sure, but not quite exactly pulling his weight either. I suppose he did drive my mom around at times, but given how my dad continued to drive like he was a New York yellow cab driver even when he left New York, I’m not sure that should really count.