my father's night table

my father's night table, originally uploaded by Susan NYC.

3/29/09 My mother bought that photo wheel decades ago. I've changed the pictures. The one showing is a picture of a family vacation we took in the early 80s - the only family vacation I remember we ever took. Other trips together were to see my mother's family in NYC, and I didn't ever consider that a vacation. (I grew up in western Pennsylvania.)

For a long time my father loved looking at his pictures - he has a lot of them. Now, though, he doesn't remember who's in them and rarely likes to look at them. He does, however, love looking at pictures of himself. There's a computer on his floor at the Hebrew Home, and I play the Flickr slideshow of his pictures, which he can watch for a long time. He makes wisecracks about each picture: "big nose," "handsome guy," and provides sound effects: laughter, chuckles, groans.

The gingerale is always there - for medicine, I guess.

I have no idea who uses the phone. I doubt if it's even hooked up. I don't call my father. I'm afraid he'll jump up to try to answer the phone and fall out of bed. That's if he even hears it.