Co-operation

  Please!  

Would everyone would just cooperate here?   We could get along splendidly!  There's just one fly in the ointment.  We are so our own selves with our own ideas.  I for one, love this about the human race.  However.  Families being families, my particular one anyway, practicing the art of Kumbaya is like herding feral cats.  In mine, having a loving agenda is a fool's prescription for self-defeat.

Of course I visited my Dad with this exact agenda two days ago. I prepared. I prayed.  Someone a lot wiser than me needs to direct my choices even when it's only me.  So I prayed big time here.  You know my Dad is 101, almost 102, living in the same three story house I was raised in.  Maybe you didn't know I'm his POA.  So this visit, I needed just two little signatures on this piece of paper his broker sent over, or else my POA was virtually useless in this day and age of corporate liability.

Thankfully, a tiny bit of Kumbaya feeling still exists in my Dad for me.  Had to be wily about getting the signature, though.  Goodness!  Dad is one scarred puppy. O.K., we all have our scars.  This particular fellow lost his dad when he was 6 months old, was raised by a single mom all alone in the big city of Seattle, entered the Great Depression in his teens, kept his nose to the grindstone this side of the Atlantic during WWII, married a high falutin' woman, and evolved into a tightwad extraordinaire.  Now there's two sides to every coin, and the tightwad's repair skills were once legendary.  Had we been born robots, he would have been in his element.  Emote?  Open an encyclopedia.  Appreciation?  Get tough!  Co-operation?  Everybody else lives to serve.  Money? It's meant to stay in the account!  Not only does he not dole out money for his own living expenses, he mistakes his grown son and daughter-in-law for indentured servants.  Yes, he has spent his life creating an exquisite form of agony for humans with Kumbaya in mind.

  Relief. 
 

The paperwork is now on its way to the broker.  I needed two stiff drinks afterwards, so I consider this my defeat.  Anyway...This week my brother will introduce Dad to a couple Respite Care Facilities.  He gets to choose which will house him for a month while the rest of us attend a family wedding.  Dad could stonewall us if he learns what these places cost.  But he won't need to know. 

I'll be writing the checks.