And what do you do?

Photograph by Frans Marais

In about two weeks time we are having a high school reunion. I’ve been told that  even class mates  now living  and working in the USA have indicated that they are coming.

I, on this side of the Atlantic, am standing on a Sunday afternoon in the door of the bathroom. I’m about to take my dad back to the retirement village after a visit over the weekend here on Barrowfield. There is tension between us. He blames me for the farm in Gauteng being sold and him being in the retirement village. We just cannot agree on his frailty and the adjustments we have to make when we get older. As if totally oblivious to our struggles with Oupa Frans and the sleepless night we had while he visited, he is upset because we did not spend any time in the workshop.

I’m tired of trying to explain and having the same conversations over and over. I am not proud of the manner  in which I often cope with his fears. I am constantly confronted with my own demons and the buttons that he pushes. I feel aggrieved because of his apparent inability to appreciate what we are trying to do to make this phase of his life easier for him.

So there I am standing in the door of the bathroom about to say good bye to Matilda before leaving for Wakkerstroom. She is sitting in the armchair we’ve put in the huge old bathroom when we moved in a few months ago. At the time it seemed strange to have it there but in the past few weeks it came in very handy. It is a comfortable seat in the dead of night while guiding and encouraging Oupa Frans on the commode. The latter was handy in its own right the last few days when we struggled to fix the blocked sewage system. With that now up and running again we kept the commode as the handy companion it proved to be where Oupa Frans is concerned.

As a last contribution on my way out I join the regular pep talk in this situation. “Very good. It is going very well. Look, the catheter is out and you are so regular. No, don’t worry about the wet nappy. Your bladder became lazy with the catheter. It will adjust and you’ll go in your own time again.”

Matilda interrupts the motivation talk and nods in the direction of the toilet. “We have a visitor.” Those words in that context  immediately  put me on guard. Her sitting quite relaxed in the armchair is somewhat of a comfort, but I nevertheless approach very carefully and look slowly over the rim. A large frog fills the whole bottom where it is floating in the water. Somehow, with the incessant rains we had for days on end and the open drain pipes it made its way up the system into the bathroom. No mean feat. With a sense of admiration I look down on him.

With the gloves on that I have quickly fetched from the store room I reach into the toilet. The frog slips back from where it came and disappears into the drain pipe. I feel disappointed and sad but have to leave.

On the way to Wakkerstroom my father and I continue the argument but mostly drive in silence. At his room I set up his television for the umpteenth time after he had unplugged the decoder earlier the week. That despite all the masking tape I’ve taped all over and writing onto it in huge letters: “Do not switch off or remove.” And the hand drawn diagrams I’ve left him of the buttons he must use on the remote controls. “I haven’t touched anything” he informs me. “In any case, the root of the problem is in all probability here at this row of switches I’ve discovered on the back of the television. Putting the aerial cable into the different sockets  has no effect either.” I do not argue, fix the television, say good bye and leave. Looking in the rear view mirror I see his lonely figure walking back to the main entrance of the building. I am upset and angry and sad, all rolled into one. 

What will I say when they ask me at the reunion: “”And what do you do, George?” Shall I say I am a man glad to find the frog back down in the toilet bowl when I get home? So that it can be caught and released under the full moon hanging silently in the clear night sky. Or shall I merely say I am a mystic struggling?

George