Over the river and...

I am a thirty-something year old woman living with her retired father. This may seem like an intolerable situation for most, but I’m an old-fashioned girl. I conform to older ideals, and I believe that, being unattached, my primary responsibility is looking after the older generation. I look after my dad in a rather covert manner. It is convenient to have free rent, and my primary responsibilities at this point mostly include making my presence convenient, and occasionally showing my father how to get rid of that pesky symbol for missed calls. My father is highly functioning with the start of senior dementia. In layman’s terms: His response times and short term memory is crap, but he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. I do realize that, over time, I will have to be the one to see to my father’s needs, fight with him about losing certain freedoms, all while making sure that he feels that he is in control and useful. I have no doubt that in this culture of throw away seniors that I am unique, and that my job is difficult. As the years pass I become more and more aware of it. There are dreams I have that wait on the sidelines because I can’t leave home for extended amounts of time. I am not looking for an award of some kind, just recognition that I don’t have it as easy as every one thinks I do.

Do you know what bothers me the most?

The bathroom is about as far from my bedroom as you can get.

My house is a two-family home built before indoor plumbing. We still have the foundation of the outhouse in the backyard. The result of this is a layout that includes two floors, but one bathroom. Downstairs…

I have to go about as far as you can go to get to the bathroom. That is, I have to go out of my room, down the hallway, down the stairs, past the living-room and dad‘s big ol‘TV, through the dining-room, over the river, and through the fucking woods, before I can PEE god-dammit!

Honestly, if I’m drunk, (and under the circumstances how could you NOT be on occasion) I am screwed as I try to complete this obstacle course that could only be conceived of in JAPAN, under increasing intoxication!

If you don’t believe me, try walking past a crime-drama while being three sheets to the wind. You’ll get sucked in like Dorothy on her way to Oz. All of a sudden you’re babbling to your father about how you saw this documentary about how these things are really done, and it isn‘t anything like this. Dad listens because he’s 72, and as far as he’s concerned company, even drunk company, is just great.

My point is that life isn’t easy, but if the bathroom were a bit closer, it would be easier. I don’t need it really close, just somewhere between crime-dramas and the occasional monster movie, and my bedroom.