Visiting my dad
Posted by markhwebster on October 21st, 2013 • 0 Comments
I just noticed that two months have gone by since I’ve written here. I guess I’ve been living my life instead of writing about it. Going back two months, I spent 17 days climbing in Squamish, Smith and Leavenworth. My main partners were Aaron, Kyle, Marty, Ed and James, each of which had a different block of time available. I was lucky to have the entire time to climb straight through. It felt great to get that warmed up. Stuff that used to scare me was easy money.
Since then I’ve been climbing on the weekends, but not as well as during my full time climbing period. Climbing skill is perishable, especially as you get older. It’s like cabbage in the fridge. Beyond two weeks, forget about it, you need to buy new cabbage.
Saturday I climbed at Index with Kyle. I can still cruise 5.8s like Lizard…so my cabbage isn’t completely bad yet.
Sunday Sue and I went down to see dad. He will be 90 this year. He still lives alone, and drives himself around town. He is very sharp. He gave me a bunch of grief about how long it had been since I’d been down to see him (a few months). He lives just 40 minutes south, so I have no excuse not to visit him more often.
We took him down to the farmers market and walked around with him, looking at all the cool stuff for sale. He walks slow because of his bent leg, but his hiking stick helps him balance, and he gets around ok.
Before he got his two hearing aids I used to think he was starting to get foggy, like mom did in her later years. But dad is doing great for 89, he was fun to hang around with. I get so wrapped up in my own life that I forget my oldest and best friend is just one hour away, and always happy to see me.
My sister was there in the morning to cook him breakfast. She had to drive 4 hours to see him, but she left before we got there, heading up further North to see her son in Seattle.
I will post pictures later.