When Dad’s Other Half Is Away

Like most adult children of long-term marriages, it is nearly impossible for me to imagine one of my parents without the other. In my case, it is not just because my mother and father are two years’ shy of having been married for six decades, but also because I live with my folks, and rarely see them apart from morning till night.

But then, earlier this month, an odd thing happened. My mother, who rarely travels without my father, went away for a week to visit her best friend, who was ill in Florida. My dad suddenly did not have his other half.

I could see how our social structure was altered her first night away. My father sat down in one of the two wingback chairs in the family room (we call them “The Thrones,” as they are reserved each evening for Nana and Papa, who sit in them while watching the nightly news over a cocktail). While the drink was not missing from his hand (my dad is the mixologist in the family), the chair next to him was hauntingly empty, as was the kitchen, where my mother would normally have something bubbling for their dinner if I was going out with my husband, Daniel.

The problem was ... it was Wednesday. That is the night we routinely head to a pub quiz in town with our friends. Like the slacker parents we are, we usually take our son, Charles, encouraging him to finish his high school homework in time to lend his youth-culture knowledge to our team of 50-somethings.

Thinking both strategically (my father knows every detail of World War I and II and has an amazing memory), as well as practically (there was nothing to make him for dinner, and he does not cook), we asked him to join us.

“I would LOVE to,” my father said, jumping up to get his coat. It must be said that even when my mother is home to keep him company, my father often looks as if he would rather go out with Daniel and me, no matter where we are headed. A party boy all of his life, my father does not consider old age to be a welcome excuse to catch up on years of lost sleep, but rather a gnawing impediment. While my mother at 80 loves to tuck in with a novel by 8 p.m., my father at 83 is often revving up, not retiring, at that hour.

Our friends were overjoyed to see him at the pub. Most of them have known my father since they were Charles’s age. But they were particularly excited when one of the quiz questions was to name a cocktail made with Irish stout, Irish cream and Irish whiskey (my dad’s ancestors come from Ireland, though the answer, an Irish Car Bomb, was lost on him).

Halfway through the two-game evening — after he had answered a tough question on Eisenhower and another on the Marshall Plan — I generously allowed the youngest at our table (who had an exam the next day) to drive the oldest home (his grandfather was now wanting to order the whole table Car Bombs). But it was much to the dismay of my competitive quiz mates. “Don’t send your dad home!” they yelled at me as I helped him into his coat.

Assuming I had now done my daughterly duty for the week, I was instead confronted over coffee the next morning by a perky Papa.

“With your mother gone, I need a date to ‘Cabaret’ tomorrow evening,” he said, referring to the musical being performed in town by the local university. “And where are we watching the 8 p.m. game Saturday?” he asked about our college football team. “Maybe we should get tickets.”

I knew Daniel had a ticket to go to the game with a friend, but asking him to maneuver my father around the stadium at night surrounded by students who would have been drinking since noon did not sound like a stellar idea.

Mentally looking for any holes in my own weekend schedule, I came up short, so instead, texted my daughter, Florence, a college sophomore in town.

“What’s your weekend looking like?” I wrote her, breaking my own code of leaving our daughter out of family plans despite her dorm’s proximity to our driveway.

As luck would have it, she was free Friday night to attend “Cabaret.”

“Great,” my father said. “I’ll make us a dinner reservation!” he added, running off to phone his favorite steakhouse. I texted Florence back, asking if she would be free for an early-bird pretheater supper.

Next, I sent a text to Charles to see if he was free to watch the televised game on Saturday night with his grandfather. Thinking he may attend the game with my older brother (who also lives with us), he refused to commit. Next up was my older sister, who lives in town but not with the rest of us (not yet, anyway). She, too, had plans. I quickly canceled my girl’s night out for Saturday.

“Go buy something easy for us to eat tonight during the game,” I instructed my dad on Saturday morning, as I had to work all day out of town.

“Like what?” he said to me. My father loves to eat, but my mother is the one who buys the food.

Rushing home late that night, I walked in to find Charles and my dad eating pizza in front of the game.

“I made them,” Charles said of the frozen pizzas my dad had bought, the smell of a burned one still lingering in the house. Charles had graciously decided to stay home at the last minute when I was not there. As I sat down to watch the game finally, my father informed me some old friends from Canada had called earlier in the day to say they were in town.

“I invited them over for brunch tomorrow,” he told me. Normally, he and my mother go out for breakfast before or after church every Sunday.

“Fantastic,” I murmured, wondering if we had any eggs. But what I really wanted was my mommy back.