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Weekend bonus shot, 03.31.13

By Lesbian Dad on March 31, 2013 in From the vault, Mostly a picture, Pops, Weekend bonus shot

Pops, Berkeley, CA.

Dad, not quite a year ago, in the Easter bonnet I got him. OK not bonnet, but that’s how we jokingly referred to it. Tried to get it on Easter, and the hat shop was closed (duh), so we went the next time he was in town with me. Hats like these are made for gents like my dad.

Thinking a lot about him today. He is more gone than here, more out than in. Thus, the heightened value of stolen moments like this one, showing me him and his love, utterly present.

He would never ordinarily feel this unselfconscious in front of a camera–would always stiffen and pose uncomfortably, the ineffable essence of himself evaporating in a puff. This image exists because I held the camera against my chest, and–yes, I’ll admit it–took three or four pictures stealth. He was looking into my eyes, not at the camera’s lens.

We sat under a shade on a sunny June afternoon; he’d just finished watching his youngest nephew “graduate” preschool in a ceremony the school held in our backyard with all the other kids; he hadn’t tired yet. We had been talking about something or another which I totally forget now. Something that made him smile like this, mostly with his eyes, which have been capable of reflecting and inspiring so much mirth for so many decades. And there he was. Being him.

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Now Some of Us Are Six

By Lesbian Dad on January 30, 2013 in Pops, Re: the lil' peanut

On his sixth birthday, Berkeley, CA.

He skipped the entire distance from midway through the school yard and down the street to our trusty steed. That crown’s his teacher’s handiwork, bless those amazing, amazing people.

Much afoot of late. Same day this chap turned six, his grandfather, whose name he bears from the middle on out, took a spill and wound up back in the ER at the local hospital, whence he had not a few days before exited, post-minor stroke. That same night, yrs truly promptly fell ill with The Influenza, which is only juuuuust beginning to saunter off, stage left. Accursed thing. Pops is more or less stable now, “salad speech” pretty much a head-scratching artifact of the past. Though the memory, shaky to begin with, is notably diminished and diminishing. Cheery spirit still intact, lard love him.

And the boy? He’s wearing six very, very well. Qoth A. A. Milne, back in 1927, when his grandfather had just turned six:

When I was one,
I had just begun.
When I was two,
I was nearly new.
When I was three,
I was hardly me.
When I was four,
I was not much more.
When I was five,
I was just alive.
But now I am six,
I’m as clever as clever;
So I think I’ll be six now
for ever and ever.

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At 92

By Lesbian Dad on January 14, 2013 in Pops

DadDad (with grandkids) on Christmas Day 2012, Berkeley, CA.

Dad always said, “Live ’til 90, then start counting.” Well, we’re starting to count.

Friday morning, on his 92nd birthday, he had a stroke. A “mini” one, as opposed to, one supposes, a “maxi” one. Though these are often early calling cards for bigger ones to come. He fell into my sister’s able and waiting arms, as it happened. As I’ve long maintained, he has been a lucky man.

While the doctor pronounces that the stroke is “resolved,” everything else attendant to his advanced years is hunkering down for a determined, protracted stay, for the duration. Whatever length that may be.

Meanwhile, his aphasia-, mini-stroke-, and long, slow-growing meningioma tumor-wracked brain does its best to recover what speech and cognition faculties he can. This, on top of years of crummy hearing, getting crummier by the day. All this makes communication a midnight hayride.

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Wordish Wednesday, positivity edition

By Lesbian Dad on September 27, 2012 in Mostly a picture, Pops

Automated affirmation, Albany, CA.

My Pops always says he’s an optimist mainly because the alternative is so much more unattractive. He’s also always been convinced that it came down to a decision on his part. For decades I fought with him over this: could he really be saying that our outlook could simply be re-routed, that the force of our will could redirect the impact of events, as simply and decisively as a railroad switch? Well, yes: that is what he was saying. And though I think he left out a few helpful substantiating details, more and more I find myself in agreement with him. And not a moment too soon.

Everyday care of my kids has rapidly filled the breach the sudden loss of my job opened up a month ago (step aside, babysitter, Baba’s back in the driver’s seat!). And though this throws a roller skate or two in the path toward my next Right Livelihood, there’s no disputing that children are grounding in a way nothing else is. Per usual, I need them every iota as much as they need me. Match made in mama’s ovaries, and in heaven.

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Interlude

By Lesbian Dad on September 5, 2012 in Baba familias, Pops

Daddad taking namesake grandson for a spin, Castro Valley, CA.

[A story unfolded after we exited these doors: it will follow soon. Meanwhile, I could't resist sharing the image.]

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GREAT GIFT FOR DAD

By Lesbian Dad on June 17, 2012 in Anima animus, Baba familias, Pops, Weekend bonus shot

GREAT GIFT FOR DAD, Home Depot, El Cerrito , CA.

As fate would have it, I went out early the day before Baba’s Day to engage in a most fatherly of exploits: buy a lawnmower. Ours had died the week before, and a small herd of preschoolers and their families were headed to our back yard later in the morning to assemble and kind of graduate-ish. (About which, more later.) Per early morning hardware store run custom, I stopped by the donut shop for a cup of hazelnut coffee and a maple bar, and allowed myself to drift through an aisle or two en route to the cordless electric mower my fellow co-housers had agreed upon. I was stopped in my tracks by the exceedingly handsome grill pictured above, not because I coveted it (I would, but fortunately my brother-in-law has one just like it and I get to use it all the time, Scott-free), but because, despite the sign plastered across it, this thing would have intimidated the bejeepers out of my own dad during his own grilling days. “SCARY GIFT FOR DAD,” more like it.

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That which we call a rose by any other name would sound as sweet

By Lesbian Dad on January 12, 2012 in Mostly a picture, Pops

The above image of my Pops is from a coupla five years back, which would have made him a spry, debonair 86.

Yesterday he turned 91. In our morning chat, which usually takes place on cell phone as I walk, he is having a harder and harder time making out various words. This morning it was “thrifty.”

Me (concluding a reference to something): “I felt really thrifty.”
Him: “You felt really chesty?!”
Me: “No, thrifty!”
Him: “Risky?!”
Me: “Thrifty! I felt thrifty!”
Him: “Ruskie?!”

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Weekend bonus shot (Monday edition), 01.09.12

By Lesbian Dad on January 10, 2012 in Mostly a picture, Pops, Sunrise Sunset file, Weekend bonus shot

Pops returning home at the end of the evening, Castro Valley, CA.

I watch him go through these doors to his apartment in the retirement community so long and hard now. Used to be he’d turn and wave and shamble off, only looking back once to wave me away (‘gwan now, doll; go home).

Now, stooped by his ninety-one years (this Wednesday), he turns and looks over and over again. And so do I.

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