"Hey! I'm gonna talk my walk now."
I can hear my dad in the other room, talking to my mother as she sits at her computer. I can hear them, even as I brush my teeth in my bathroom. This is an important distinction to make: I can hear them. They can't hear me. Mom has two hearing aids, but they're not the best. Dad is deaf in one ear, and has a hearing aid in the other. He has no directional hearing, meaning he can't tell where the speaker is unless he is looking at them. It's a frustrating phenomenon, causing the (non) hearer to crank their head around in a frantic dance, trying to discover where the sound is coming from.
Today, Dad is being good, and using his walker on his walks around the block. More importantly, he is using it properly. Often, we catch sight of him, with one hand on a handle, and the walker off to the side. He doesn't really need it, he says, despite the shuffling footsteps, the peripheral neuropathy that keeps him from sensing small changes like rocks beneath his feet, and the near constant vertigo from the Miniere's disease in his somewhat-working ear.
He doesn't need it, even though the physical therapist says he is to use the walker 100% of the time, even walking around the house, because he is getting stronger every day, thankyouverymuch. And the body heals itself. He just needs to figure out what will unlock that mysterious healing potential, and reverse the effects of 82 years of the opposite of self-care.
82 years of borrowing a friend's motorcycle and crashing it, but only after a series of daredevil jumps and crazed steering all over a construction site. Of wrestling all over the house and the yard with his sons and now his grandsons. Of repeated concussions sustained on basketball--yes, basketball--courts by players responding in kind. 82 years of injuries and illnesses up to and including two types of cancer, and eating whatever, whenever. Chocolate, dark chocolate, hot chocolate, chocolate glazed donuts, chocolate cake. Of 12 hour work days in the sun, on industrial projects and nuclear power plants, of working hard and playing hard.
He has no cartilage left in his knees. But the body heals itself, he says. Oh, I believe him. The body can, and often does, heal itself when everything is in alignment. But I've never heard of spontaneous cartilage regeneration in older adults.
And there's no cure for Alzheimer's yet.
"Okay," says Mom. "Once around the block. No stopping to talk to the neighbor's for an hour again, please. They have things to do, you know....What are you wearing?"
At this, I poke my head around the corner, toothbrush still in action. He could be wearing anything at all: suit and tie, one of her old sweatshirts, paint-splattered dress slacks, I've see it all. Instead, I see him tugging at his favorite denim jacket.
"I don't know," he replies. "It was sitting on my chair."
He doesn't know? He wears that jacket every day! He got it from a former employer; it's even embroidered with their logo. How bad was he today?
"It's nice and warm, and zips up. Keeps my neck warm" he continues, and I realize that he's talking about what he has on underneath the denim jacket. "I like it!"
"It's a Patagonia jacket," I yell, mouth full of toothpaste."You got it for Christmas, from Julie and Mike!" Despite my yell, the conversation in the other room continues without a pause.
"I know it was on your chair," says my mother. "I put it there. I kept seeing it in the room, so finally I washed it and put it where you could see it. I just don't know where it came from."
I try again. "You got it as a Christmas present!" Unfortunately, due to the froth of toothpaste, this come out as "Ew ot-i or Rismas!" For two hearing impaired, that's never going to be translated correctly. Besides, they're still talking.
"Oh! Well, I don't know either, but I know I like it!"
As I rinse out my mouth, the sound of the walker comes closer. Dad stops by the open bathroom door and asks if I had said something. "Yes," I reply as I dry off. "Julie and Mike gave you that jacket for Christmas."
"They did? How do you know? Did you buy it for them?"
"No need for that," I laugh."Julie is perfectly capable of doing her own shopping. No, you and Mom each got one."
"Oh!" he says, satisfied at last. The walker heads to the door, makes a clanging sound against the door frame to reassure us of its presence, and he is off to see the neighborhood sights. And to talk to the dogs and the owners, the guy on the corner trimming his bushes, the lady across the way, the man who lives behind us...
