I caught my father after a shower. How formal the word, father. Like addressing a character in some Elizabethan play. His hair was mussed, wild, even thinner than before. He’s been going gray since he was 15, and every couple of months he colours it black again. It works for him, taking at least ten years off his age. People don’t really know how old he is until he tells them that I’m in my twenties.
How scary it was to see him like this, like some crazy old fool with all his hair pointing outward and uncomposed, but still knowing that he was still my stable, strong, cold father. The thought that he may one day go senile, lose the virility that he seems so desperate to cling to, filled me with pity.
The bacon they serve me for breakfast is dry, dull, devoid of soft fat, or grease that pools in the waves of each strip. A result of his heart condition. No more cheese, red meat only once a week.
Even my mothers’ delicate hands have deeply withered, though they remain soft from her attentive care, which include varying sorts of designer hand creams and specialized lotions that follow her everywhere. My parents have long stopped wearing their weddings bands, but she wears one of my grandmothers rings, a beautiful old-fashioned cut on a clamp mount, left to her in the will. I remember my grandmother pinching my cheeks, holding my hand, her skin loose but, like mom, supple as a softened chamois.
I see this ring on my mother, and realize that she’s getting older too.