I Come From Aliens

There’s a picture from my wedding where my father looks at me with his face all screwed up with concern and his hand scratching his head.  Forty years later, on the couch at the dementia ward where he now lives, and I visit, he gives me the same look. This time, I’ve called the brown thing in front of him a table, and he isn’t certain I am right. Last week he told me about the world he used to live in, this week this is the only world he lives in.  Gone are the roads and the hills and my mother and cars and fishing.  Much simpler this way.

He pats his shirt pocket where he keeps his glasses. When he can’t find his, he steals other peoples’ glasses.  My brain, he says.  Why don’t you wear them? I ask, and I get that look again. My brain, he says more emphatically, so I will understand his need to only bring them out in the most dire circumstances.

Gone is his walking. Gone is his scratching out numbers in some obscure equation. Gone is his lanky body at the dining table trying to explain story problems to me. Gone are the gardens and house and the trip to China and the exact way he reloaded the spoons in the dishwasher after my apparently feeble efforts.

We look at family photo albums.  Occasionally he reaches out and touches the face of someone. Gone are the names, though he doesn’t seem to care. Look at the old people, he says about the pictures of his parents.  He touches an ancient picture of me, says That one was trouble.

Even baseball disappears. I give him his glove with the softened and scratched leather, and he turns it and turns it. Gone is the National Championship he was so proud to win. Gone are his buddies and their rallying cry of Let’s We Go. Gone are the days he called me scatter arm. Gone, all of it, to some other planet. The glove so used it folds in on itself. Finally, he slides his fingers into the glove and smacks the palm. He winds up and mimes throwing a ball at me. I catch it, and across the universe, I throw it back.