My dad’s been failing for some time. About a year ago, we brought him down
to live in the apartment over our garage. This wasn’t easy in let me
count the ways, and it wasn’t until summer that he allowed himself to
feel comfortable and moderately content.

His problems have progressed,
and shortly after New Year, partly for his safety but primarily to save
what’s left of my own sanity, I finally signed him up for daycare at a nearby facility.
The place is big, bright, active, well-staffed, and safe. He, of
course, hates it, and we’re working on that.

One of the things that
bothers him is that it’s far away. Which it isn’t. He insists that it’s
in New Haven. Today, I told him for the hundredth time, “Dad, it’s in
Middlebury” (our next-door town). His response? An explosive, indignant
“No way!” The absurdity of not being able to persuade him of a
verifiable truth about an area he once knew like the back of his hand
eventually drove me to prolonged hilarity somewhere just on the safe side of
hysteria. I finally asked him, mostly in jest, if he thought I was
kidding, was lying, or was just plain stupid. He often has trouble with
his speech, so he struggled for a moment before he spat out the word he
wanted.

“Stupid!”

Our slender saving grace right now is that we’re still capable of reacting the way we both did. We laughed.