Keep the birds away from the table

Dad was eating breakfast today and called me over.  “Mary, help me keep the birds away from my cereal,” he requested. 

“Okay, Dad, but I don’t think they’ll bother you,” I responded, and that seemed to satisfy him.  

Dad has reason to be concerned about the colorful cardinals and drab sparrows trying to join him for a meal.  They sometimes fly directly into our window, only a couple of feet from the kitchen table.

I theorize that they see their reflections, ignore the window, then fly toward the birds they see inside.  Some might say it’s because they don’t see the window at all, but I’m not a good enough housekeeper for that to be a viable hypothesis.

How strange and unpredictable is the brain and how it interprets what it sees and hears.  Watching young ones learn about their world is intriguing, as is watching old ones unlearn.

Last weekend, Dad and I were videochatting with 18-month-old Bastion.  I aimed my phone so that little one could see Clyde and Jackie close up.  He immediately walked to the phone and touched the screen, trying to reach those babies.

Neurologists might disagree, but it seems to me that Bastion reaching out to Clyde and Jackie is similar to Dad’s concern that the birds will come inside to join him for a meal.  Neither completely understands that a piece of glass separates them in space or distance. 

Of course, Bastion will soon learn that the screen and the babies are far away realities.  And he’ll eventually figure out that, like the dolls, many things in life aren’t what they seem. 

Dad, on the other hand, is losing his ability to make those distinctions.  To him, C&J are living children, even though he knows their skin feels like plastic.  Also, he often believes the faces on TV are in the room with us.  He may even think they’re people we know.

It’s not just glass that no longer separates Dad’s truth from fiction.  His mental membranes don’t seem to form a wall between what’s “real” and what he imagines.  He dreams are true for him.  He awakens driven to take follow-up action, to pay an employee from his nighttime work at the shipyard or maybe to repair his RV from his overnight adventure. 

It’s tempting to shake our heads in pity.  Or maybe to giggle uncomfortably.  Yes, I feel sad when Dad is visibly confused, when what is inside his head doesn’t conform to his lifelong grasp of what is outside it.

I try to soothe, not pity.  When possible, I go along with his truth.  His reality and his brain’s self-created memories can be so much more interesting and lively than his mostly immobile actuality.

It is my joy to watch Dad with C&J.  Like Bastion, he believes they are babies. He loves them.  They bring him visible pleasure as he smiles and sings to them.  Also like Bastion, Dad thinks he can reach out and touch that face on the other side of the phone screen, the face of his soft, warm, excited great-grandson. 

In their minds, both my father and my grandson are as close as that phone screen, not half a continent away.  That is a sweet reality.