Role Reversal

It’s a sign of getting older when you hear your children saying things that you used to say as a kid. Yet a further sign is finding yourself saying things to your children that your parents used to say to you. But saying something to your father that you used to hear from him? That’s got to be some kind of weird familial karma.

Went back home for the Thanksgiving holiday, trying once again to prove Thomas Wolfe wrong. It’s about a seven-hour drive from St. Paul to Chicago, so a flight was the preferred choice. I flew on Thursday and Saturday, a schedule far preferable for a couple of reasons:

· Airports are always jammed on the Wednesday and Sunday surrounding Thanksgiving
· Flying on Thursday-Saturday is much cheaper than Wednesday-Sunday
· 48 hours is just about the right amount of time to spend around your family

United got my business, over the locally-based but particularly customer-hostile Northwest, and The Friendly Skies cooperated with on-time flights and pleasant accommodating crews. Dad only lives about five minutes north of O’Hare, so it was a simple matter for him to pick me up.

As I waited outside with my single bag I was reminded that there are approximately 23,000 vehicles in the Chicago area that look like his gold ’99 Camry. But I soon spotted his vanity plate (his initials followed by the number nine – Mom’s lucky number was three, so she figured that nine was three times as lucky) and I slid into the passenger’s seat, carefully moving his navy blue Greek fisherman’s cap aside so I wouldn’t sit on it.

“Hey, Dad, thanks – Happy Thanksgiving!”

“Well… Happy Thanksgiving to you, too. You’re right on time for us to go get us some lunch.”

Dad’s 81 now, and his advancing age has only reinforced his perpetual need to eat every day at 8:00 am, Noon, and 5:00 pm. The phrase “like clockwork” was invented to describe his dietary habits.

“What time are we supposed to be at Cathy’s?” My sister was having us over for Turkey Day dinner.

“She said ‘Any time after lunch’, so… let’s go get us some lunch.”

It never occurred to me to suggest that we might just get a small snack to tide us over until the Thanksgiving feast - after all it was 12:10 and lunch was already… late. We stopped at a neighborhood café run by a Greek family (“Greeks always have the best restaurants” is a fatherly adage) where Dad ordered corn beef hash and eggs with a side of pancakes. It was enough food to stuff the both of us but he polished off most of it. I made a small dent in my eggs, figuring I’d save space for the upcoming turkey feast.

After a stop at Dad’s place so I could change from my traveling jeans into something a bit dressier we headed over to Cathy’s for a traditional Thanksgiving: huge turkey dinner and a pitiful Bears loss followed by that holiday classic, Spiderman. I drove home, as the tryptophan had obviously hit Dad harder than I and I really didn’t want to end up on Friday's front page:

HOLIDAY TRAGEDY: FATHER, SON PERISH IN FIERY CRASH

Dad fell asleep after eating turkey, Police report

Staying at Dad’s is always a bit Freudian for me, his guest room is my sister’s old bedroom, including her old single bed. It’s got a very loose bed frame and an open-air box spring that pitches like the Edmund Fitzgerald; a simple toss or turn generates a cacophony of creaks. Between that and the Precious Moments dioramas on the wall, it’s not exactly conducive to a peaceful drift-off to slumber, especially when Dad stays up until 1:00 or 2:00 with the TV blaring.

Friday dawned dreary and chill. Had the traditional 8:00 Cheerios breakfast with Dad, the two of us sitting in our usual assigned seats at the kitchen table: him on one end, me on the side. A couple years ago I’d ventured out with the other idiots on Black Friday to stand in line for 7:00 am bargains, but not this year; none of the 1,287 sale flyers in Thursday’s Trib contained anything I couldn’t live without. Besides, I had more important missions.

Dad had heard a commercial on WGN about some sort of chiropractic clinic that he wanted to pass on to my little (“little” as in 6 years younger – in reality, eight inches taller than I, bummer) brother Mike, who’d recently had some back problems. Dad needed an address or a phone number; I was going to do an Internet search for him at the library. I’d once bought dad a PC – a VIC-20 when they first came out – figuring he’d be intrigued, but it never made it out of the box, so the modern home PC era has passed him by as well. Besides, he’s got me.

The second stop I needed to make was an auto parts place; on the drive home Thursday night Dad had mentioned that his gas mileage wasn’t quite what it used to be. When I asked the last time he’d changed his car’s spark plugs the answer had been: never. So I figured that after 65,000 miles it was about time.

Hit the library to get the chiro info, then the parts place; managed to get one of the two plug brands specified in the owner’s manual. A good thing, Dad doesn’t care much for “equivalent” replacement parts. And come to think of it, neither do I. Had to make a trip back to get a spark plug gap tool (these particular plugs needed a special type) and some anti-seize compound, but at last we were ready.

The whole operation took less than an hour. The plugs were easily accessible, right on top of the engine; the most difficult part was unhooking a couple of the spark plug wires to get enough slack to remove the plug ends. Dad had all the right tools; hell, I think he has every tool known to Mankind.

At the library I’d checked the proper torque for the new plugs, and I made sure that Dad concurred with the reading I was getting on the torque wrench as I tightened each new one down. “Now, you don’t want to turn ‘em too tight – not with an aluminum cylinder head and steel plugs,” he said. And of course he was right. He always is. There’s an old saying (that I first read in a James Bond novel, of all places): “Scratch a German and you find precision.” That’s him.

Then at about plug #3, something finally dawned on me: I was doing all the work. He was holding the flashlight and handing me the tools. This was a switch; as long as I could remember he’d always been the master, I was always the apprentice. But not this time. And when I asked him “Can you hold the light so that I can see better, not so that you can see better?” the transformation was complete – I’d become him and he, me.

I started flashing on more things: before, whenever he’d visit I always had to have a project or two lined up for him. Now I was the one doing projects for him, it’d become a Thanksgiving Friday tradition. The previous year I’d installed a new thermostat in his living room after I noticed it’d been sitting on the kitchen counter since my last visit in July.

As a child I’d always been the one asking him questions: how does the infield fly rule work, what made the sky blue, why is there war? Now he was the one asking me, about chiropractor’s phone numbers and the complaint address for T.G.I. Friday’s and the availability of cheap prescription drugs from Canada and “Which is bigger, Italy or California – can you look it up? I’ve got a bet with the guys I bowl with.”

When we were teenagers, he’d checked our rooms for drugs. Just that morning I’d covertly gone through his medicine cabinet to see if he was telling me about everything he was taking (he was - one for high blood pressure, another for arthritis). When we’d go out to a movie as a family he’d check the rating to make sure it was suitable for kids, “Nothing too racy.” That morning over breakfast I’d suggested we go out for dinner and a movie later; he’d mentioned Sideways and I’d talked him into Friday Night Lights because I knew it didn’t have as much sex or nudity.

We finished at 11:55. “Perfect - just in time for some lunch,” Dad said, and he went inside to set the table. I put the tools away and started the car to make sure nothing blew up or caught fire. I came into the kitchen to wash the dirt and grease from my hands, and noticed that Dad was already eating his usual ham and cheese and lettuce sandwich with his usual waffle potato chips and his usual glass of milk. Except - he was sitting… in my chair.

“Hey, Dad… I’ll sit there, you go sit in your usual spot.”

“Naah, I’m fine – there’s more room there, I’ve got too much crap piled up over here. I’m almost done, you have a seat.”

We ate in silence. Finally he said, “Well, that’s the last time I’ll have to do that. Yeah, by the time those plugs need replacing…”

“The car will belong to someone else,” I interrupted. “You’re not going to keep it for more than a hundred thousand, are you?”

“No. Guess I won’t.”

“Right. You’ll be on your next car by then.”

“Right.”