Dad Rehab

I roll my dad down the hall. A serious abstract painter with an MFA and the subject of many one-man shows, my dad really takes issue with the bad art on the walls of institutions -- bright pink sunsets over aquamarine oceans. Early into the Stroke Adventure, my brothers and sister and I began to mimic him from behind the wheelchair. We would point to the paintings as we passed. "See that? Crap."

Lost in Translation

"THIS GYRO DOESN'T TASTE LIKE LAMB," my dad says. He's 80 and has lived a varied life. He sweated it out and learned to smoke cigarettes on Guam in the months following World War II; helped raise five children; traveled across the country as a salesman; whiled away evenings jamming on acoustic instruments with his friends and family; went back to college at age 40; became a high school art teacher; traveled to Europe many times; nursed my mom through cancer until her early death; then moved from St. Louis, our home town, to South Carolina and began a new life.

But he's never had a gyro.

My 18-year-old nephew told him a few days earlier about the good Greek restaurant down the street. "I could pick up takeout," my nephew suggested. My dad insisted he wanted the gyro, rather than, say, a lamb kebab. He talked about it for days. Now, he can't understand why the gyro doesn't taste like the roasted lamb he was expecting. Somewhere, somehow the message got garbled.

That definitely happens a lot here.

At a table a few feet away, a woman with a neatly coiffed platinum blond bob set off by a navy- and white-polka-dotted silk scarf around her neck, lifts her fork to her face with precision and grace, hinting at a previous life of privilege. The fork and food land squarely on her cheek.

It's a wonder anyone maintains weight here. I force down a bite of moussaka.

"Is this white stuff mayonnaise?" my dad asks and pokes with his one good hand at the gyro, which by now is so mangled you wouldn't recognize it. Food and liquids dribble out of the paralyzed left half of his lower lip, which is deflated, loose, like a rubber baby pool that has sat on the lawn well into autumn.

"Yogurt," I answer. Barb, seated across from me, smiles and rolls her eyes. I lift the lid of one of the large containers and note the giant mound of iceberg, olives, feta.

"There's way too much salad," I announce.

When caring for the sick, we go overboard, buy too much of everything, as if grand-scale purchases might undo things.

Welcome to Las Vegas

I WAS FLOATING. I WAS IN THE CLOUDS.