Dear Journal,                                                                                                      11/22/12

          Today is Thanksgiving. It is Daddy’s ninety-eighth Thanksgiving, and the family is over at my house. My tiny house always seems to be where everyone loves to come during the holidays. My one-story house, the last of the older homes in the neighborhood filled with two-story, new, rebuilt homes, always gets so congested and hot. This year, because of some family absences, it’s not as bad as usual. With sweat running down the back of my neck and caking my short hair to my face, I frantically shoo everyone out of my kitchen while I put the last few touches on my dressing.
          My brothers, in-laws, nephews, sons, daughter, husband, and grandchildren are all here. Tom and John munch on chips and dip, while Wade and Toby watch the football game – Texans vs Lions. Because it was our own Houston team on the TV, their eyes were glued to the screen tighter than on normal years during a Thanksgiving Day game. All the women are standing up mingling and catching each other up on the things going on in their lives. Daddy, on the other hand, sits in his wheelchair – silent.
          My father, Robert Behrman, lives in a nursing home, and I don’t know if he’s okay. The staff tells me he’s fine, but just to make sure, I visit regularly. I am responsible for daddy. Tom and John don’t do much to help out. Momma died almost ten years ago, but it didn’t phase daddy too much. He misses her dearly, and I know he wants to be up there with her as soon as possible. It’s almost his time. Well who knows really? He’s ninety-eight but that doesn’t mean he won’t live ‘til he’s 102. It’ll be his time when he’s ready, I suppose. But ‘til then, I am responsible for him.
          Today, on Thanksgiving, I think he feels lonely even in this sea of familiar faces. He can’t hear very well, so I got him hearing aids a while ago. We catch him turning them down all the time because the chaotic noise of chatter gets jumbled up in his hearing aids and sounds like a screeching barn owl. Today, all he does is sit and stare at the football game with the boys. I wheel him in between them, and he just sits there slumped over with a blank look on his face. He stares into the television until one of his grandchildren leans over to hug him. They give him a flash of a beautifully white smile – sometimes that smile has braces – and tell him, “You look good in that shirt, Papaw! Very handsome!” They give him another smile, squeeze and kiss his hand, and walk away to talk to another family member or graze at the bar where the dips are stationed.
          I always wonder what is going through Daddy’s head. What is he thinking at this very moment as I am giving him a plate of chips and dip? “Might as well not speak to anyone unless spoken to because they’ll just have to yell at me, even though they’re just two inches from my face. My Susan has always made sure I am taken care of. But still, I take pride in being able to feed myself. My old, wrinkly, sun-spotted hand slowly and shakily comes towards my mouth with a chip and bean dip cradled in the crutch of my big knuckled fingers, but it still gets in the old hatch eventually.”
          Daddy has always been a quiet soul, but he did used to talk and be very lively. My grandchildren remember him sitting with Momma (Meemaw) in the dated yellow and blue 70s kitchen in the tiny blue house on Peckham street. My kids and their kids would come to visit, and daddy and momma would both be sitting at the table under a yellowish light shining from the glass bowl chandelier smoking a cigarette. Shelves filled with picture frames of the days when they looked like movie stars, little clay tchochkes, and bowls filled with the day’s smoke ashes stood in the background. The TV would be on with a ballgame, and daddy would have one of the babies sit on his lap while he asked if they could say their “ABC’s.” He continued to ask this question up until they were ten years old. Sometimes he could be a little clueless like this, but he was pretty “with it” for a man in his seventies who had experienced the rollercoaster of life.
          After a couple hours of chatting and catching up with the family, Daddy would get up from his seat at the kitchen table and make his way to his dark bedroom. It had a queen bed with brown bedding, blue-ish green carpet, and an office to the left that had an old, dusty desktop computer and pictures of his army days. No one would really notice he was away except for my grandchild Claire, who would become curious enough to see where he went and what he was doing. Normally, she would find him asleep on his bed or sitting in the recliner watching the TV alone and away from the crowded kitchen.
          Nowadays, he’s turned into “this” daddy: the one that sits in silence by himself, whether he’s surrounded by family or not. He sits, waiting to be spoken to I guess. What’s he thinking? Is he okay? Did he get enough to eat? Does he have to go to the restroom? All these are questions that are racing through my head during the times when I’m with dad. When Thanksgiving is at my house everything is crazy, but Daddy remains the same, at least the same as he’s been for a while now, silent but with a peaceful smile.

Susan