Sunrise, Sunset

The song "Sunrise, Sunset" from A Fiddler on the Roof is about the feelings parents have when they see their daughter has grown up and is ready for a new stage of life. When someone writes Assisted Living: The Musical and it makes its Broadway debut, there should be a song or two about what it feels like to see your parents' health and well-being decline to the point that they need full-time care of their bodies and minds.

This, then, would be the soundtrack for my recent visit to Florida. "Oh, you went to Florida. How nice!" people say, perhaps a little envious that I traded the frozen north of New England or the gray dampness of London for the sub-tropical splendor of South Florida. "Yes, I went to see my parents." I reply. "Oh, how nice!" comes the next conversational gambit. There is really no way to describe seeing your mother with the short-term memory of a three-year old, although her body remains vigorous, or your father, the WWII Warrior and Man of Action, now confined to a wheelchair and dependent on the kindness of aides for his every movement, including those of the bowel.

Their 2 bedroom apartment is kept at 79 degrees F, with the A/C on auto, so in the winter, when the outside air temperature is lower than that, the air conditioning will not come on, and the house becomes stifling hot. Being someone who is now prone to night sweats, this is not a good scene. Also, the bedrooms are first on the air duct route, and the sunporch area, which contains the "guest" daybed, is last. Convincing them to allow one to switch the A/C to constant fan at night is a feat reserved for only the most hardened debator.

Dad has developed a way of coping with the feeling of helplessness. As his aide wheels him to the breakfast table, he announces "A Descendent of the Roman Emperor Arriving In His Chariot". I took to adding a little trumpet flourish bleated through my cupped hand each time he arrived. The various aides were variously amused.

One day I took Mom over to the supermarket for a little food shopping. Another morning I cleaned out the fridge of all expired or suspicious-looking food. One afternoon I rifled through the pantry, consolidating all nine of the unopened bottles of salad dressing, for example, on one shelf (the same thing gets bought whether it is on the list or not), the boxes of teabags, etc.

I arrived on New Year's Day, so that there were football games on television. Luckily I had brought lots of knitting projects with me. Other programs watched were FOX news and the weather channel. Each and every time a commercial comes on, the TV is muted so that "we don't have to hear that stupid thing". Most times, the program resumes before the remote-control person realizes it and so the first 30 seconds of each watchable segment is aired without its audio. Sometimes, the person gets it right away, other times, the wrong button is pushed and the channel is changed or the scrolling menu is brought up. It is best not to get too invested in the outcome of any program as there is no guarantee that even a half hour show will be seen in its entirety without changing to check the weather or the stock market or the FOXy news.

When Israel decided to change its tactics from air to ground forces, we were then subjected to All-Gaza All The Time. Normally the sight of war machines rolling and countries attacking and retaliating and bombing and killing each other's citizens is something I cannot stand to watch. There was really no alternative, since I had inadvertantly killed their computer, so I continued to sit and knit. I decided it's much easier to be an armchair bourgeois pacifist if it is NOT your own country that is being attacked.

Another day I took Mom to Macy's so she could buy a new outfit. She decided on a shirt. It had to meet certain specifications, such as button-front (over-the-head too difficult), short sleeves of a certain length (to hide crepe-y arm flab - her words, not mine) and only certain colors and styles. While she decided on the shirt I tried on seven things and bought three of them.

One morning I wheeled Dad in his wheelchair "around the lake", which takes about fifteen minutes, and then over to the rose garden. Even though it was only 9:30 in the morning, the heat was enough to get me winded after only one lap. Dad enjoyed pointing out the more garish Christmas decorations, which reminded me of when I was younger. We would drive around the neighborhood and "tut-tut" at the houses which were "lit up like a bar-and-grill". Once they moved to Florida thirty years ago we would drive around and look at the palm trees festooned with lights and the pink or turquoise fake trees inside people's houses.

On our rolling tour Dad wanted to share his particular favorite holiday decoration. It was a giant inflatable pirate ship being piloted by Santa which he called "Sailbad the Sinner". This was one of those contraptions which is made of parachute nylon and uses a hair-dryer motor to inflate itself. This particular specimen was about six feet tall and eight feet long. The pirate ship is crewed by a bunch of reindeer: one has an eye patch, one is fishing off the bow, and another pops up from the crow's nest intermittantly and peers through binoculars at the passers-by. This crazy show totally eclipsed the next-door neighbor's rooftop display, which was of Santa arriving by inflatable helicopter, with actual spinning inflatable rotors.

All of this ticky-tacky, including fake evergreen wreaths on every other front door, was set amidst gorgeous tropical gardens with flowering shrubs, flowering trees, and beds of annual and perrenial plants. Bougainvillea, impatiens and roses in fuschia and magenta blossoms jockeyed for position with banana trees hanging with unripe fruit, rampant crimson coleus, hibiscus, and gardenia bushes the size of a volkswagen. Over all of this reigned the floss-silk tree, (Ceibia speciosa) whose bark looks like a wrinkly elephant covered with a pox of thorns on steroids. Some of this tree's flowers were still clinging to the bare-of-leaves branches, while others had fallen on to the short-shorn lawn like discarded tissues. Close examination of the blossoms revealed silken white petals with one white stamen tipped a gorgeous fuschia, as if it had somehow brushed up against the bougainvillea and been permanently stained for its sin of lust.

Our perambulation took us past the exotic waterfowl pond, where we saw Mama Asian Goose sitting on her nest with Papa Asian Goose standing watchfully by. No activity emanated from the nest, although Mama preened and repositioned herself among the invisible eggs. It was a poignent reminder of the circle of life, as Dad and Mom have reached the sunset of their own lives at on Lakeside Circle.

I flew back to Boston on January 5th and returned to the bosom of the knitting group for one more day...