It’s the simple things
While out grocery shopping with Gus strapped to my chest in a BabyBjorn, I’m struck by how much more exciting the world feels. With him at my side, the colours of the yogurt containers seem brighter, the Bee Gee’s falsettos over the PA feel more castrato- esque.
I’m reawakened to life and reminded of past outings with my own father. For him, when experienced with his son, the most mundane sojourns became epic adventures. One time, decades ago, we took a walk to the old part of the city and he still talks about it to this day.
“Remember how hot it was?” he asks me every few months. “Remember how we had to stop into that convenience store and each of us got a soda? We drank them straight from the can – no straw, no cup. Just like that. Like construction workers. Like street hustlers!”
My father doesn’t get out much. But when he does, he enjoys himself. The man is capable of joy. It’s just that his happiness makes my mother uncomfortable, so he tries to keep it under wraps. Whenever he starts to come out of his shell, she crams him back in there. So disco dancing at weddings, eating dessert with too much gusto, even drumming on the kitchen table to a radio jingle – all rub her the wrong way. If my father even laughs too loudly, she tells him he’s getting “punchy.” That usually quiets him down.
So when he and I get together, I see it as my chance to nurse him back to health. Really, all we do is head out for a bite to eat, but my father is wonderfully easy to please.
“Where do you want to go?” I ask him when we set out and, most often, he waves a hand and says any old place will do. A favourite expression of his is, “I don’t need special pampering.”
Pampering! Since the mideighties, the man has been using the same 99- cent VHS tape to record and re- record the same documentaries about Nazi hunting. He keeps his cufflinks in a washed- out yogurt container on his dresser.
At home, my father finishes a great many of his meals with the plate yanked away in mid- bite, forced to finish his corn-on- thecob stooped over the sink. So when we find a restaurant – usually some cafeteria – rather than eating hunched over as though planning a prison break, he reclines and looks around.
“This is the life,” he says. And now I get it. It’s wonderful when you’re out in the world doing the simplest things with the one you love so close. It is indeed the life.