Walls

My father is off to the hospital for a hip replacement surgery tomorrow morning. All weekend he's been a bear, and I have kept the kids home; they usually run back and forth between the houses all weekend long. Tonight I made a special dinner and Dad and Mom came over, and my sister was here from Maryland, and we lit candles and toasted his good health and speedy recovery. Glasses went down, forks were picked up, and I said that we should talk about our hospital and rehab center visiting schedule.

(Last time Dad was in the hospital I discovered that my mother is singularly unable to sit in a guest chair in a hospital room for more than about half an hour. Whatever the reason--it's how she is. She is simply not the type to baby her husband--and he, alas, is the type that shrieks for babying, and increasingly so as he gets older. Things have also not been good between them the last few years as a result, and I think she's rather looking forward to his absence as a chance to breathe a bit. He has let it drop, though, that he expects her to stay with him all day, every day. She has told me, privately, that she will not. And I don't want to be in the middle of it this time: I want a clear understanding of expectations and promises. I want a little straight talk.)

My father shot me a look across the table. "There's nothing to talk about," he says, and he's gone from zero to 60 fury in all of two seconds. "Mom has cleared her schedule and she's going to wait with me at the hospital every day."

I know that's bullshit. I know she will be just the companion he wants on day one, but it's downhill from there. She'll find reasons not to go. And I'll feel bad that he's on his own and craving attention, so I'll go every evening after work. That's how it played out last time. I was the one who spent the hours in his guest chair and made up stories about things that were keeping Mom from the chair.

But I didn't want to ruin dinner, so I dropped it. He sat there stiffly, then as I was cleaning the dishes he asked me to come next door with him because he wanted to talk to me. I left everyone with their wine and followed him, and when he entered his kitchen he turned to me in full rage and let loose.

It was rage about me--about how I meddle in his business--and about the kids--the noise they make, their quarreling--and about the cat (I can't fathom that part, but it was in there, too.) He shook his finger at me and told me that he didn't want ME at the hospital--he wanted MOM. And if I went, he hollered, then she wouldn't. And who do I think I am, anyway? He and Mom HAVE a plan, he tells me, and I don't need to go fucking it up. (He used the "f" word. That's a measure of anger; he never swears.)

I remembered nearly killing myself, pulling him back to wellness last time. Remembered all the things I helped him with--things that daughters don't want to help fathers with, and fathers don't want daughters helping with--and all the compensating I did for all the failings of his relationship with my mother. And I remembered being their intermediary after he came home, too--softening her rejections, softening his cries for attention, trying to make it look like something else to both of them until they could moderate for themselves. I'm not doing it again. I just don't have it in me. And so tonight I snapped.

I don't even remember what I hollered at him, but it stunned him. I hollered until I was crying, and I kept hollering--hollering right over his comebacks, right over his protests. I remember telling him that his rage had nothing to do with me or the kids or the cat, and that he was a piece of work. I told him he could try forever to control other people--to make them into something they aren't--but the only thing he'd get would be a bitter life. I told him not to worry: that he wouldn't see me at the hospital.

Now I feel like I've shaken my fist at God.

"Why were you crying?" M asked me when I was tucking her in. "Poppop made me mad. Sometimes I cry when I'm mad," I told her. L was listening from the next room. "I heard you telling Granny what happened," he said. I remembered eavesdropping on my own mother after she'd had a battle with Dad and was reporting it to a sister or her mother. I remembered feeling afraid of her tears; she was the strong one, even though he was the blustery one. I hope I didn't frighten the kids.

I went to a seminar last week about developing a change-adaptive culture in the workplace. Thought it would be awful, but it was the best six hours I've spent in a long time. The guy told one story:

A polar bear was put into a 10' x 10' cage for two weeks while his habitat was being rebuilt. Every day the bear would walk 10 feet, turn, walk ten more feet, turn, walk ten more feet, etc. At the end of the two weeks the bear was returned to his new habitat. Fresh water, balls, caves, rocks. And he walked into it--ten feet, then turned and walked ten feet, then turned...

When Dad returns with a new hip, will he still sit for 14 hours a day in front of the computer and play solitaire, barking from his seat, demanding and grunting and frowning and tossing off comments? I honestly don't think I could take it.

I'm finding him a therapist.