Pasta on the patio with Pa

What a drag it is getting old

We haven't written about Pa much in the course of this blog and the 13 months we've been back in Minneapolis. Truth be told, I often don't know what to say to him or about him.

Pa is 96. He lives on the other side of the lake, in a nursing home. When we got here, he was still in assisted living, where he had his own two-room apartment with a little kitchen and a bathroom, and 24-hour assistance. but some months back, Pa got to the end of his savings and had to let them go, put the apartment up for sale and had to move into the nursing home wing of the facility. Only through the generosity of my cousin Chris does Pa get a room to himself.

Nanny has been gone for 12 years now. Pa lived in the old house in Niles, Ill., with help, until one day he drove his car through the back wall of the garage and Mom brought him here to live in Minneapolis.

It's hard to visit him sometimes. Pa still functions pretty well, mostly knows who we are and who the kids are. That's especially true for Colleen. When we first moved here, Colleen would be very shy when we'd get to his room, and if we spent an hour there, she wouldn't warm up until the final 15 minutes. That shyness went away a little while ago and now she is very playful with him, and I know he appreciates it. When I think about what he's gained by living what can only be seen as beyond his expected time, I know that relationships with our kids are on the list.

We brought him over on Labor Day for dinner on the patio and just hung out. He hates the food in the nursing home but to be honest, he can't taste it anyway, so it doesn't make much difference. He spent a good amount of time trying to recreate these great paper airplanes he used to fold when we were kids, but couldn't quite figure it out.

Mom gets exasperated with her dad, calling at all hours, not always remembering who he's spoken to already or what they've spoken about or agreed to. And Cate, bless her soul, has taken Pa to heart in our time here. We went over to visit on Sunday and Cate basically drove the conversation. I sat there in awe of her.

Tonight Pa called -- having trouble with his television remote for the first time in a while. All Pa wants to do is watch the ballgame, and sometimes he gets in his own way. There are too many buttons, and he really only needs five of them. He gets so frustrated. I went over there to fix the remote and he wanted to know what I had done, but I couldn't tell him because sometime he might want to fix it himself. And that would only make it worse.

I don't want to be 96. Sure, 85 maybe. And fifty years from now, maybe 96 will be the new 86. But old and frail and unable to help myself, that's not something I want to be. I don't care how many great-grandchildren I would live to see.

But I don't get the sense that his time is up. The last time I spoke to Nanny, she was deep into the throes of Alzheimer's, and even though I only got the true Nanny for a couple of minutes, I was thankful because I knew I wouldn't get another chance.

I have yet to feel that with Pa.

Quote of the day

After 9 a.m. Mass today we all had brunch at the homestead. Afterwards, Pa (you know, our 95-year-old grandfather) told Ryan, "you're getting fat."

Ryan paused for a second, before blurting out, "you're getting old!"

Oh, and Happy Easter, everyone. Photo to come.

Since she's been gone

Cate has been out of town for a few days helping her mom out, so it's just been the six of us (Nonna and Da, not some new-found offspring). And tomorrow I go out of town for a meeting at Verizon, so there's a span of 24 hours where neither of us is here.

But everything's been fine so far. Emptying the notebook of what you might have missed if you were out of town or otherwise really, really busy this weekend.

• I took Elizabeth and Robert with me to Stevens Point, Wis., for a D-III basketball game. Just 220 miles each way. I sat Elizabeth down beforehand and told her, "Now, Robert is going to annoy you, and he's going to annoy me. That's just the way he is. You and I need to deal with it and not let it stress us out, ok?" Elizabeth didn't get very stressed out. We saw a great game. Well, at least I did. Robert mostly sat on the floor under the media table because I told him he couldn't sit at the table and read Garfield at the same time. He chose the floor. And he's little, so that's great. Elizabeth drew pictures, some of them basketball-related. Afterwards the Wis.-Stevens Point men's basketball team had an autograph session and there were sets of trading cards, which Robert had a great time tracking down and getting signed while I was conducting postgame interviews.
  
• We listened to both of our Beatles compilation CDs. Elizabeth needs to show you her picture of I Am The Walrus. I also introduced them to the joys of listening to the Beatles one speaker at a time. You know, where the vocals are in one speaker and the instruments are in another, or the lead vocal is in one and the background vocals are in the other. Good times.
• After the game we stopped at a Noodles for dinner because Elizabeth had never been and Robert enjoyed his one meal at one. We got there about 10 minutes before a bus pulled up. Good timing.
  
• On the way home, they slept, at least for the last three hours or so. But before they drifted off, we pulled over by the side of the road, turned our lights off, rolled the windows down and looked at the stars. Neither of them had ever seen so many stars before. We've found something Abbotsford, Wis., is good for.
• Friday night we met a high school friend of mine and his family for dinner, Broadway Pizza. Our kids had a great time and his kids warmed up pretty quickly. You'd be surprised how well 3-year-olds can converse with each other over pizza. Robert had chicken fingers, of course. Elizabeth and I split a white pizza. She was the only person at the table between the ages of 7 and 35. And she did just fine.
• I have sitting next to me a worksheet Robert brought home from school, where there are six pictures and you color the needs one color and the wants another color. Well, he does great -- roller skates, a television and a cat are all wants, while fruits and vegetables and places to live are colored with needs. Then there's a shirt. He colored half of it one color and half the other color. Not every shirt is a need, definitely. There's also a second worksheet, asking what you would buy with a hundred dollars. He answers a toy ($20), candy ($10) and a job ($50). He also does the math to show that that's only 80 bucks. Hopefully he's saving the rest.
• Colleen got to stay with Nonna while the kids and I spent all day driving and hooping. They went to Aunt Alicia's birthday party and hung out with Amelia and Mackenzie and the like and reportedly had a grand old time.
  
• I took Robert and Elizabeth to church this morning. Since I sing in the choir, I go over a half-hour early for warm-ups and practicing, and Cate usually follows with the three kids at 9. But Colleen stayed home and I took the other two in. Robert sat very nicely during rehearsal and then he and Elizabeth sat in the congregation, very close to the choir's space, and behaved very appropriately. I was proud.
• On Friday night, Colleen did not crawl into bed with me. Robert reported that she crawled into his bed instead, and he pushed her off, "because she was literally all over me, Dad!"
• Nonna took Robert and Colleen over to visit Pa this afternoon. Robert impressed him with his reading ability and Colleen sang Skip to My Lou. Yeah, Colleen. The one who buries her head and won't look at her nearly-96-year-old great-grandfather.
• Elizabeth was off playing with a friend of hers from school. They went sledding. She didn't bring back any physical or emotional scars.
  
• Tonight we had lamb. Yum!
• We didn't have one tough bedtime the whole time I was here and Cate was gone.
  
• Stuff is all getting done, just maybe not at the same time that it would have otherwise. Robert's lunch box got cleaned out ... on Sunday night. Elizabeth has been practicing her clarinet, but mostly before school.
  

Merry Christmas from the Colemans

All in all, it was a pretty good Christmas round these parts. We're all here, all doing well.

Last night we had dinner at my cousin Chris' house, with many, many people we'd never met and a handful of people we had. The kids had fun playing with their Miller cousins, and everyone marveled at the cookies that Cate made. She's been baking up a storm the past few weeks, first for a choir bake sale and secondly for, well, this. I've had trouble keeping away from them, to be honest. Stupid cookies!

Elizabeth was up late with Cate finishing up a project -- a gift for Amelia, their favorite cousin -- even after I got home from Midnight Mass. Of course, Midnight Mass was at 10 p.m. We didn't have anything that required assembly this year, but a lot of gifts to wrap, and I had a lot of those on my plate this year. So for those of you who got inexpertly wrapped presents ... uhh, sorry.

This morning nobody came into the bedroom before 7 a.m. and we actually didn't unwrap a thing before 9. (Thanks, Cate, for the extra hour or so of sleep.) Presents were opened in shifts today: the ones we exchanged with the kids and from Cate's mom and our friends were opened before we all went to church this morning, and the ones with the rest of the family weren't opened until after dinner.

Oh, dinner. Wow. Dinner was a Neil creation, primarily, with the rest of us contributing items or hands. But he roasted the beef tenderloin with a nice dijon mustard sauce and also grilled scallops for the non-beef set. I'll have you know Cate tried a scallop and liked it enough that she ate another as well (remember seafood is still new to her), though we were not able to convince Elizabeth to expand her palate as well.

Elizabeth reports, not surprisingly, that opening presents was her favorite part of the day. (She's just woken up and can't get back to sleep, so I solicited her input.) She likes the new fleece blanket that Nonna made. Each of the kids got one, and in fact, the other two are sleeping underneath them as I write.

Surprised Elizabeth didn't mention the Wii, but then again, she's a down-to-earth kind of girl. And the Wii was the last thing they opened. We can thank Cate's mom and sister for that one. I actually am interested to see what one of these darned contraptions is all about, but have barely used one. We'll get it set up.

Greetings from Minnesota!

What does a girl do on her first day as a Minnesotan? Listen to Prairie Home Companion of course. While passing through the hall Elizabeth caught a moment of "Guy Noir, Private Eye" on the radio and said "Ooo! What station is this? It's like TV but without the screen." She's listened to Garrison Keillor before but never as a fellow Minnesotan.

The Meeting of the Cousins went very well. All were cranky at the end but it was well past bedtime so we'll overlook that. Baby Amelia was sleeping for the initial meet and greet but Robert soon helped her overcome that. There were lots of kisses and peek-a-boos. Colleen sang her songs, Elizabeth entertained with cartwheels (even Uncle Neil and Uncle Ryan tried their hand (s and feet) at the cartwheel and were as successful as grown men can be), and Robert helped and talked (his personal strengths). Aunt Cate got to hold her lots (thank you) and enjoyed sniffing her head. That's not too weird -- babies smell nice (most times). Pa also attended and worked his great-grandchild magic. Colleen ran right to him and he lifted her onto his lap. He got lots of hugs and she just ate up his undivided attention.

Special mention goes to Jennifer Jensen who stopped by to say welcome (and provided the photo of Colleen and Pa!). We went together to an open house, our first in the Minnesota market. Not the house for us I think but a nice way to get our feet wet -- with a friend. She also took us to the Linden Hills playground. So the kids got some fresh air and Cate got some grown up conversation. Very nice way to spend an afternoon.