Miz S

Whumpf.

My father-in-law's birthday present, 58 years ago.

I knew you guys would be all, "Oh, you're a saint!"

I'm SO NOT A SAINT. Just ask Josh or anyone else who knows me in real life. On my good days I am cheerful and flexible and fun. On my bad days I am high-strung, fussy, and moody. And that was before we moved into my father-in-law's house. On top of my basic very un-saintly personality, mix in the family drama that crops up with unsurprising regularity, and then picture me stomping around in a huff.

Ain't no one handing out any halos or wings around here.

The funny thing is: I'm surprised at how easy it has been, overall, to uproot myself and live in someone else's house. I was afraid I might not be able to do it. One day, when my mother-in-law was still alive, I went back over to my own house to pick up mail or something. I walked around whimpering happily at all the familiar sights, then sat at my kitchen table just bubbling over with joy at being home. That day I worried that I would not be able to step up to the plate and do what needed to be done.

But as I said, it has not been that hard. It turns out that I can be quite happy and comfortable over here. The hard part is getting our own house packed up so that we can rent it out. When the hell are we supposed to do that? We are too tired after a long day at work, I've been taking a 6 hour class on Saturdays (Spanish for Educators, gracias very much), and I go to see my own parents on Sunday.

I guess we are going to have to press other members of the family into service to help us out. So, if you are related to me and you see my phone number pop up on that screen, be forewarned. There is a ton of crap to sort through and boxes to be carried to and fro.

Josh and I have discussed the pros and cons of this plan backwards and forwards many times over. And just to reassure some of you: I don't feel forced into this in the least. Josh and I squabble from time to time, but mostly we are really good at operating as a team. If I really couldn't do this I would say so, and Josh would be okay with that.

But in the end, moving out of our house and in with my father-in-law is the only thing that makes sense. He shouldn't be alone. Not because he can't manage the activities of daily living. He can, sort of. But because his heart has been broken. 

This was brought home to me with a whumpf last night when we returned home from celebrating his 91st birthday over at my sister-in-law's house. (My mother-in-law always made a big deal on his birthday. She told me one time that it was because his family was large and poor and they had never celebrated anyone's birthday and she was horrified by this.)

Pop-Pop had told us that he didn't want us to do his birthday this year, but we didn't feel like we could just ignore it, you know? We may have just made him sadder. I don't know.

I came in the front door just minutes after Josh and Pop-Pop had arrived home (we were in seperate cars) and found Pop-Pop sitting on the stair landing, looking at a book.

It was the book that my mother-in-law (Joell) had given him on October 29, 1953, the first birthday they celebrated together. The book was The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and it was her favorite book of all time, a book that in some way defined her. (In fact, my niece Maddy read an excerpt from that book at Joell's memorial service). 

Anyway, I walked in the front door and found him sitting there on the stairs. At first I thought he was feeling tired and was resting before the climb up the stairs. Then I saw what he was looking at and, goddamn, I had to dig my nails into my hands to stop myself from bursting into tears right then and there. I said something lame like, "Oh....there's that book that Joell gave you..." and he said, "Yeah. I was just thinking about her. It was a good life."

Josh was equally tearful after witnessing this sad vignette. When we were alone in our bedroom he said to me, "And that's why we're here. Can you imagine him going to bed alone in an empty house?"

The answer to that question is obvious. No. I can't imagine it.  I'm glad we can do this.

I have glossed over The Crazy, but believe me there has been plenty.

We don't live in our little yellow house in the suburbs anymore. We live in da city.  A straight 4-mile shot to the White House. Not that I would ever shoot at the White House! Get off my back, FBI!

Josh, Pushkin, and I have moved here to provide companionship and hot meals to my 91-year-old recently widowed father-in-law. We are here for the duration. A year? 6 months? 5 years? It doesn't matter.

We have moved in and out a couple of times since my mother-in-law was sent home to die in early September. It was an easy and obvious decision when my mother-in-law was dying, but it was harder in the immediate aftermath. My father-in-law wanted some alone time. He used his alone time to get pneumonia and ended up in the hospital half dead.

Pushkin doesn't like moving back and forth. He's all, "PICK A HOUSE AND LIVE THERE, GODDAMMIT."

We were all, "Duuuuuude, you need us to live with you." And he was all, "I don't want to be a bother to you! Also, you eat too much food! And who threw out my gefilte fish?"

I am not lying at all. There was a heated, high-decibel conversation about the gefilte fish, which Josh had thrown out because it was REALLY REALLY OLD.

It's really very funny to hear one's husband and one's father-in-law argue about gefilte fish. That right there made up for all the trouble of marrying into a Jewish family.

Anyway, it's all been decided now. We live here. We need to put all our shit in storage, because there's no room for it here. We will rent our house and try to bank the money we will save. It's a good opportunity to pare down our possessions, and at the same time it will probably extend my father-in-law's life. He will eat better, we'll notice if he looks peaked, and we'll pick him up off the floor if he falls down. It's a win-win situation, right?

I'm not going to lie, it is really hard for me (and Josh) to leave the little house where we have lived for 24 years. But, I think it's going to be okay.

Meanwhile, my own parents have been stable and healthy-ish, so that's good. There have hardly been any crises at all, except for a minor one on the day that Pam The Aide called me to say that Mom had decided to clean out the refrigerator and had thrown out all Pam's food AND stopped up the sink AND created controversy by insisting she would use the toilet plunger to unclog the sink which Pam considered very unsanitary.

When I called my siblings to report this hilarious scenario, each one of them had the exact same reaction: "What the hell? Mom was cleaning out the refrigerator?"

She never did that when she was healthy. Why is she doing it now that she has Alzheimers?