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| My burgundy sweater! |
“What are you looking for?” This is my wife at seven fifteen in the morning when I am banging around in our bedroom trying to not wake her up. A size 12 font on white paper can not convey the malice and threat in her voice.
“Nothing, go back to sleep.” Holding my left knee with one hand because I knocked it into the bed frame when I staggered around after racking my shin on the dresser drawer I forgot to push in last night, I make shushing motions with my other hand. “Can’t find my slippers…”
“Under the chair in the dining room where you left them last night after I told you not to leave your slippers there.”
My wife turns over and buries her head under her pillow. I can hear more muttering going on, but decide to live and not ask her “What?” Discretion is the better part of valor right?
Sometime since my last birthday I have gotten old. Having a thirteen year old daughter and two sons aged seventeen and nineteen respectively should be keeping me young. But it’s not working. I know this for several reasons. First of all I find myself having conversations where I am completely lost.
“And then she said…”
“Who is she again?” I ask my daughter.
“Eve, my friend at theater group.”
“Theater group? What theater group?”
“Dad. Theater group, Tuesday and Saturday mornings? You drive me.” She rolls her eyes and sips my coffee.
“Yeah…what did she say?”
“She said that next season, because she has stage….”
“What stage is she? I didn’t know she had cancer, is that why she didn’t laugh at my cancer joke? That was a good joke.”
“Dad. Stage fighting Dad. Stage Fighting, it’s a class for theater.” As she leaves the table I turn to my wife.
“I don’t want to hear it, I’m busy.” My wife is checking email, flight coordinating and stretching all at the same time.
I also know I am old because I now have favorite clothes. When I was not old, I wore what I wore. As long as it matched (which is a different problem altogether) I wore it.
“Hun? Where is my burgundy sweater?” I learned what burgundy was after insisting my son bring me my red sweater. He brought me everything in my closet that was red except what I wanted. Only after stomping up the stairs and coming down with my red sweater did my daughter teach me about red and burgundy. I am still confused as to why my son could not figure it out.
“Hanging in the laundry room.”
“I need it.”
“It’s not dry yet, wear something else.” She points toward the pile of sweaters on a shelf.
“What? It goes with my jeans.” Holding up my jeans I believed I made a solid point.
“Everything goes with jeans. Wear something else.”
“I can’t, it’s my favorite.” I do not know what that means. It seemed like the right thing to say at that point. Besides a favorite sweater I have a favorite pen, a favorite salt shaker, a favorite radio station and a worst of all a favorite chair.
Lastly, I need my slippers. Making coffee in the morning? Slippers. Going to read a book in my favorite chair? Need my slippers. Using the bathroom in the middle of the night for the third time? Slippers. Can someone explain to me what is going on?
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