2001-05-08 - 11:36 p.m.

Just A Young Boy

I haven't talked about the hamsters in a while. Yes, they are a merry subject. Let's talk about the hamsters before we get on to the depressing stuff.

The litter of baby hamsters is a week old today. They are all still blind, but their fur is coming in nicely. They all appear to be white, which is too bad - I was hoping for a gray hamster. There are either three or four of them - I still can't tell for sure. Linda does not seem to be overly nervous, but she is guarding her brood jealously. I suppose it's because she already lost one litter.

They are just starting to eat solid food, and they are very big for their age, not unusual for such a small litter.

Cinnie, the long hair cinnamon-colored hamster I bought a few weeks ago is finally getting tame. She is still a little skittish, but she is getting used to being handled. Earlier tonight she was running around the Hamster Palace in the clear plastic ball. Right now she is on my shoulders as I am typing these words. Every time I hit the space bar I can feel her flinch.

So today I visited Dad in the hospital again. His Majesty was in rare form today, showing more signs of his very evident mental decline.

Dad was in a regular hospital room, having been brought down from ICU yesterday. I walk into the room and he's sitting in a chair next to the bed, taking his hospital gown off.

I ask: Why are you doing that, Dad?

The reply: Because I'm going home!

No, you're not. The nurse rushes in and helps him put his gown back on. Also, while he was undressing he'd pulled out some of his monitors, so she reattaches them.

Dad seems much more mobile and alert than previously, but he is evidently very confused. He thought he was at the military academy he attended as a boy, from what he was saying. He then asked me where he lived before he came here. I tried to describe Hotel Happy to him but he didn’t remember any of it. He's lived there for the better part of three years.

He had no idea how he wound up in the hospital, although I had a hard time convincing him he WAS in a hospital. Dad has always been very good at ignoring unpleasant truths.

At one point he looked at me, all wide-eyed, and said: "I'm just a young boy. I don't belong here."

Ah, if only that were true.

I remember reading something somewhere about the concept of Adult Children. When kids are brought up in a dysfunctional home, they don't learn the set of lifeskills they need to function properly in the grown-up world. They are not Adults but Adult Children, and they need to finish growing up in order to fit in with the rest of the world.

It looks like I'm the Adult Child of an Adult Child. How fucked up does that make me?

Anyway...

Tonight was Janis' last night in town, so I invited her out to dinner, mainly because I wanted her to meet Lily. The two of them got along quite well, but I think Lily was a little surprised at how different Janis and Harry are. Janis is rather mellow and happy-go-lucky, while Harry is rather driven and intense. Lily describes me as somewhere in the middle. I guess so.

Lily got to see Janis at her best, just relaxing and talking. Just so long as you don't expect Janis to act responsibly, you'll be fine. Janis has been in town about a week, and she's only been to visit Dad once, and that was about for 20 minutes. The rest of the time she spent hanging out with her friends.

Well, if I could get away with doing that, I certainly would.

This is the first time I've seen Janis, live and in person, in about five years. I have a feeling that I might be seeing her again sooner than that, in fact probably sooner than she thinks.