May 18
My son’s pet gecko, Fridge, lives in a glass cage on his bedroom dresser. Fridge is a leopard gecko because he is black with yellow and orange spots like the jungle cat. Owen got Fridge as an optimistic eight-year-old, with promises to take care of him and play with him. Instead, David and I throw a few crickets in the cage every couple of days and give him a halfhearted “g’night” when we cut on his night lamp. It wasn’t always this way, though.
In the early days we tried to play with Fridge; we built him a cardboard playground with tiny spaces to hide and ramps to climb. When we handled Fridge, however, he would hiss and bite at our fingers. “I guess he just doesn’t want to leave the cage,” we said. So, for two years he hasn’t.
Owen still likes for me to lay with him at bedtime. He used to drift off quickly, but now his busy brain keeps him nervous and awake for a while. Fighting sleep, I find myself staring at Fridge in his cage across the room and think of my Dad sitting in his nursing home bedroom.
Putting him in the nursing home brought me simultaneous comfort and immense guilt. I had a similar feeling the first day I put Owen in daycare at eight weeks old: agony about abandoning him for my own sense of comfort and normalcy. Some days my Dad doesn’t remember much of anything about the past year; other times he can tell me the exact spot where his reading glasses are still hanging on his bedroom dresser back at the “old manse”.
Dementia is funny like that and also maddening. Daddy sometimes tells me he feels trapped. Should I have tried harder? Taken care of him more directly, in my home? No. His alcoholism disintegrated too many nurturing thoughts between us. Then there’s the fact he hates being around my loud, wild boys, while praising them for being loud and wild.
Ambivalence and contradiction surround me. I am full of joy yet incredibly sad. I know I made the right choice but question it every day. I am taking care of my Dad but never laying hands on him.
I look down at Owen tossing and turning next to me, trying to shake whatever pre-teen anxieties are scratching at his mind. It’s easy for me to be present in this moment with him. In this single second, I am certain and connected. Maybe it’s not about choosing what’s right or wrong, but just being there in the space between.
