We sit on the back porch Wednesday night; a baby osprey wheezes in the palm tree beside the house. The ghost of the man with the headlamp and the fishing net trawls around the canals below us. Wind in the mangroves sounds like coins in your pocket. Dad’s crying and holding back and crying and holding back. He’s frustrated about his life, his sitting and sitting and sitting, “If only I could go out into the community,” he says, “If only I had a car. I don’t even have a car.” He says, “I go out onto the streets and nobody smiles back at me. I’m alone all the time.” He says Alzheimer’s is his fault. He says it sucks, “I’m young,” he says, “I’m not an old man.” I have never seen Dad so emotionally raw. He’s crying and crying and unable to decisively pinpoint the origins of his uselessness. Mom’s crying, too. He pulls us into a football huddle hug and says, “Okay. That’s enough of that.”
This week’s theme: permeable borders. Let it all spill out. I don’t know what this means in practice, but in theory I’m imagining myself as a night-canal seeping its fingers onto the grass.
