“I Have Gift”

“I leave room for five seconds and already you are on computer. Put that thing away, boy, I have gift for you.”

I looked up from my iPhone, then back down to finish my comment on Mark’s Facebook post about his Iceland vacation.  “Just a second, Dad.”

“I have gift,” he said again, the sound of his voice followed by the shuffling of his slippered feet and the rhythmic clopping of the legs of his walker.  By the time I looked up, he had made it back from the bathroom to his bed.  He turned his back to me and held the walker while he lowered himself onto the edge of the bed.  One leg up as his body turned, then he used his hand to help his other leg make the journey from the floor.  I helped adjust the pillows and got the blankets covering his body again – a lot of effort just to relieve oneself, but now he was positioned in bed again.

“How’d you manage to get a gift for me?”  No internet shopping or field trips at this place!

He didn’t answer, instead saying, “What’s that smell?  Can you smell that, boy?”

I hadn’t noticed before, but even a shallow inhale brought the fragrance of baking cinnamon to my attention.  “Someone must be making cinnamon rolls.  Man, that smells awesome.  Guess they’re on the menu for tomorrow.”

“What menu?  They just bring me whatever slop they like.  You think they make something special for an old Italian?  Some ossobuco and a nice Chianti?  No.”

“Not likely in a nursing home Dad.”

“Ah, nobody cares about you when you get old.  Forget it, tell me what you’ve been doing.”

“Well, I started that new job last month so that’s been keeping me busy. Debbie and the kids…”

“They not come visit me ever, I forget what they look like.  You must have pictures on that computer you’re always staring at.  You show me.”

“They were just here in September, Dad.  You just forget.  Let me finish this post and I’ll show you some recent ones.”  I added the jealous emoji and posted my comment to Mark and then pulled up a picture of the three of them at Kaylie’s cross country meet. “Here they are at Kaylie’s meet last week.”

“Let me see.  Where are my glasses, where are they?  You find them to me.”

I reached over to his nightstand and picked them up and started handing them to him, but pulled them back, “Dad, how can you see through these things?”

“They’re fine, just give me, boy.”

They weren’t fine.  They had dust and smudges and old man eyebrow hair stuck to them.  I wiped them with his bedsheet so at least he could see something through them and handed them to him.  “See Kaylie on the right and Jamie in the middle in the Cubs shirt.”

“You have more?”

“Yeah, just swipe to the right.”

“Wipe what?”

“No, Dad, swipe, here let me show you.”  I turned the phone towards me and moved the picture right with my index finger.  “Just do that, you’ll see a bunch more.”   An email notification came on the screen then.  I took the phone out of his hands and opened it; work of course!

“Why you take pictures away?  Let me see!”

“Just a minute, Dad.  I need to read this email, it’s work stuff.”

“Work – it’s 7:00 at night.  You work too much. That computer nothing but bad for you”  

“Well, that’s what pays the bills, Dad.  They pay me to be accessible all the time, it’s not like the old days when you left work and didn’t think about it until the next day.” I read the email quickly, dashed off a response, sent it and then reopened the photos and handed the phone back to him.

“I look at these while you help Mrs. Vitale across the hall.”

“Help her with what?”

“She needs someone to write note to her granddaughter.  Her fingers no work right anymore, too shaky.  You go do this.  When you come back, I give you gift.”

Mrs. Vitale was the only other Italian who lived in this wing of the nursing home, so she and Dad had instantly bonded when we moved him here last year.  She was a little younger than him but her Parkinson’s had advanced to stage four (according to her daughter) so she didn’t get around much and I wasn’t surprised to hear Dad say she had trouble writing.  I stopped by on my way in or out to say hello when I had time, which wasn’t often, and she always made a big deal about seeing me.

I walked across the hall and found her watching Dancing With The Stars.  She didn’t notice me so I knocked three quick times on her open door and got her attention.  “Ah, Paolo, you come in.  Such a nice boy, always you come see me.  Come, sit, sit.”

Mrs. Vitale was the only person who I let call me by my given name.  I didn’t even introduce myself to her as Paolo, just Paul, but either she figured out my given name or didn’t care.  We chatted about her daughter and my Debbie and our kids, and eventually she spoke her note to me and I wrote it in the card.  Her granddaughter had made her a special drawing on grandparent’s day at school even though she wasn’t able to come; she said it was the first time she had missed going.  She ended it with “Ti amo mio piccolo pomodoro” which she had to spell for me. She said it meant “I love you my little tomato.”  She said she always liked to include a little Italian to keep the language alive in her family. It reminded me that I should touch base with Mr. Cotant about bringing her some fresh tomatoes – she loves tomatoes.

When we had finished, I went back to Dad’s room and when I walked in, he turned the TV off.  I took a quick look on his bed and nightstand – no phone.  “Dad, where’s my phone?”

“It was slippery.”

“What?”

“It was slippery.  I was wiping and my hand knocked it and it fell on the floor there.”  He pointed to the floor on the other side of his bed, so I walked over and sure enough, it was there on the floor, with its screen cracked like a mirror in an opera house after the soprano hit the high note.

“Dad, what happened?  What’d you do to my phone?”  I held it up and pointed the screen at him.

“Ah, that cheap imported crap.  It should be made better,” he said dismissively.

How could the screen get this damaged if he just dropped it?

“You sit and talk to me, boy.  That thing just distracts you anyway.”

What could I do at 7:30 at night?  I’ll have to go online when I get home and order a new one.  In the meantime I picked up the battered iPhone and put it on the nightstand.  At least he didn’t shatter the SIM card.

I grabbed my chair and pulled it back to the door side of his bed and Dad and I caught up on the gossip from the nursing home. “If that swine McDowell cheats at bingo again, I punch him in the mouth.  He make me so mad, I could spit.  But he not as bad as Donny, you know what he did?  He grab that young girl who came in a few minutes ago to check on me, put his hands on her…culo.  He should be kicked out of here.”

“They should make a reality TV show – call it ‘Seniors Behaving Badly’.  They could just set up cameras here and have enough material for a full season in a few weeks.”

“Ah, who cares about what happens to old people waiting to die. You tell me more about what you doing.”

I told Dad about things at the house and he listened closely and smiled until I started telling him about Thanksgiving.

“…we had a small bird since it was just the four of us this year…”

“Where your sister, where Valerie?  You not have her and her husband what’s-his-name over this year?”

“No, you know there was that thing on Labor Day.”

“What thing?”

“You know, I told you she and Debbie got into an argument about gay marriage.  Debbie is for it and you know Val isn’t.  Val didn’t have to come at her like that, though.”  I hadn’t talked to Val in a month; she owed us an apology.

He leaned toward me, took my hand in his and gripped it as tightly as old fingers could and looked into my eyes.  In a low, whispery voice he said, “You stop this.  No living in past.  You forgive and move on.  She is sister, only one you have.  You need her and she need you.  Don’t be stupid.”

My head swayed left then right as I said, “It’s not that easy, Dad…”

“What, it is easy.  You say sorry, she say sorry and you move on.  No looking back, boy.  You do this for your father so I know my children will be there for each other when I go.”

I didn’t answer, but I knew we’d get over this eventually, I just hadn’t put any effort into resolving it.  But Val was my sister, and she and Francisco and Debbie and me always had a great time together.  Our girls and her daughter were fast friends, and I didn’t want to lose any of these  relationships over something like this.  All this coursed through my brain while Dad continued to half-squeeze my hand and stare. He wasn’t letting go, either of my hand or the point.

“Alright, I’ll call her tomorrow.  Are you happy?”

“I’m happy when this place burns to the ground.  Then I’m happy.”

We talked for a while longer, and I lost track of time amongst the laughing and the lecturing from him.  But I still didn’t have my gift.

“Where’s my gift, Dad?  You keep threatening to give it to me, but I think you don’t have anything.”

“I give gift before you go.  First, you tell me about new job.”

It was hard to explain exactly what an internet security technician did to someone who never used computers, but I did my best.  Dad listened closely and nodded, although I don’t know how much he really understood.  He also seemed to have heavy eyelids and his chin kept slightly drifting towards his neck.

  When I paused, he said, “This sounds like good job.  You are happy doing this?”

“I like it a lot, but there’s a rumor now that the company might be sold and if that happens, I could lose my job if they consolidate functions.  You know, we shouldn’t have bought that new house right before I changed jobs, we’ll have a tough time with the bills if…”

“No worry.  You are smart and work hard.  If anything happen, you will find new job.  And nothing may happen anyway, right?  No worry about something you not control.  You just work hard and everything will be OK.  You remember when I lost job at Tootsie Roll factory when you were in school?  I find new job at Wonder Bread, better job, make more money, everything turn out good. Same thing happen for you.”

I remembered that.  My mother thought we would lose our house and she made us wear all our clothes for four days before she washed them to save money while he was unemployed, and Dad just kept telling her everything would be OK.  And it was.

“We’ll see, we’ll see.  Anyway, it’s getting late so I better go before they throw me out of here. I’ll see you next Thursday, OK?”

“OK, boy, I see you then.”

But I had to ask, “Where’s that gift you promised, or were you just making that up to get me to stay longer?”

“I already gave you gift.”

“You didn’t give me anything?”

He leaned toward me again, “I get you to stop looking at computer and talk to me.  I get you to help others and stop thinking about just you.  I tell you to stop holding grudge against your sister.  I show you how to stop worrying about future. All these things I do to get you to focus on now, present.  Today is gift, that’s why they call it present.”