Turning 50

I turned 50 this month. I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. There’s obviously nothing I can do to change it, and I don’t hate that I’m 50. I also don’t feel 50. I don’t feel different than I did at 49 or 45. Thanks to the rheumatoid arthritis, I hurt more than I did at 40 and am a bit more limited, but I don’t even feel like I’m 10 years away from that. I guess it’s not supposed to be any different since I just moved from one day to the next, but it seems like something should be different. Somehow, something momentous.

What I find really weird about it is remembering Dad’s 50th party. I was in my mid-20s. Not yet married a year. Mom and Dad went out to dinner with friends. My job was going to Mike and Marianne’s house to help set up the surprise party. The pretense was going there after dinner to play games. Probably chicken foot or Mexican train with dominoes. Friends filled the house, and Dad was totally surprised. We had a great time.

Dad was still sailing cargo ships. The captain. He could take a ship and her crew anywhere around the world. They had computers onboard then that took care of lots of stuff, made parts of his work much easier. Dad could still take out his sextant and plot where he was on the ocean almost to the exact spot. He wasn’t as fast as the equipment, but I know he was every bit as accurate. He was almost as good on land. If you needed to know where something was in Houston, he could tell you. And he was always up for a road trip.

He was also making pretty much anything he wanted out of wood. He had a huge radial arm saw from the 1970s and lots of other machines. We could give him a picture of something we wanted built, and he could draw up the plans and turn it out. His work was beautiful. I have a chest, shadow boxes, spoon boards, a couple of little tables from him. There’s a bigger chest at the foot of Mom and Dad’s bed that he made. A big chest of drawers divided into three levels. Lots of little boxes to hold decorative stuff, many of which were for displaying Texas flag items when they had the craft booths with Coomer’s Craft Mall.

He could put in a new electrical outlet or drop a new telephone jack into place. Light fixture or ceiling fan needed replacing? No problem. He built new fences for friends. Constructed platforms that could be assembled in different configurations for the new church building. He was almost as good as Mom helping in the kitchen at church or camp. He was king of the grill at our house.

Dad was always on the alert. He would hear the softest noise outside and be out the door to see what was happening. He even woke easily from a sound sleep, ready to defend us. We were safe.

He couldn’t do everything, but he sure could do anything he put his mind to.

As I write this, I’m babysitting him. He doesn’t stay alone much now. He would for a few hours at most, definitely when Mom would run to the store in the neighborhood. In the last couple of weeks, he no longer wants to be by himself. Mom isn’t comfortable leaving him either.

He’s restless at the moment. We’re watching NCIS. He didn’t care what we watched, but the master builder lost interest in a tiny house show within about 30 seconds. He chose NCIS. I wasn’t sure it was going to stay on because about 20 minutes into it, he was bored. The shows have to have horses running around or stuff getting blown up like on The A-Team to hold his attention, and even then, he flips channels like crazy. I Love Ranger Perry Van Dyke Eyewitness News makes for some interesting storylines, though. TJ Hooker will be on at the hour, which might have just enough action to keep him occupied for a little while.

We had a good time at dinner. He likes to go out and do stuff even though he doesn’t remember where we’re going or what we’re doing for more than a few minutes, sometimes seconds, and once we’re done, it’s totally gone. We had pizza at a nearby spot where you can still sit down to eat in the restaurant. He paid as I told him to get the 20 and the 10 out to cover the $23 and change. As he reached for his wallet, he feigned that he didn’t have it (which might not be feigning although he’d had it in his pocket 30 minutes earlier). I told him that he’d better because I wasn’t paying, and he’d have to wash a lot of dishes. He just grinned and got the wallet out.

I told him a little bit about work as we ate. He laughed when I mentioned the first time Uncle Karl let Mom come along with him and some friends when they were teenagers. He was mortified when she ate her pizza with a knife and fork. A little later I opened the local ABC news app to give us some more topics to talk about. Dad doesn’t do well initiating conversations much of the time, but with the right topic, he’ll usually respond to statements and questions or at least enjoys listening to the information.

Mom told us we could stop at Randall’s for a better snackie than the banana and yogurt and pudding at the house. We found a 7UP cake with a free bottle of 7UP because the cake is a new product and cherries for a great price. A lady was contemplating getting some, and I told her, “At $1.77 a pound? You have to think about it?” She started to cave, and I said to get a small bag. She said that she couldn’t do that because she wouldn’t get any once the others knew about them. Dad jumped in at that point with, “You need to get better at hiding it!” She laughed and said that yes, she needed to find a better hiding place for her stash. 

Now he has lots of explosions and fistfights to watch thanks to William Shatner. We had our cake, and he’s leaned back in the recliner. Mom is on her way home, and I will be soon.

Life is still good.