Driving Force

 So last week my dad ("The Brick") found out that he is functionally blind in one of his eyes.  He's been undergoing treatment to see if he can regain some of the vision.  This treatment involves injections into the eye while he is awake. So far he's done this without any local anesthesia. Every time we talk about it it makes me squirm. Literally shaking and wiggling around in my chair (yuck, like right now).

He doesn't complain. He under reports health problems (I'm sure it has nothing to do with The Arch Mother's sense of humor). In fact he spent a few weeks with the trouble before he mentioned it to anyone. So far he's had three of these injection treatments and the last time it caused him a fair amount of pain.  When I was talking to him on the phone he was downplaying his discomfort and I started to laugh.

"Dad, there is a saying about this, an ACTUAL euphemism for something terrible you don't want to do, like I'd rather 'stick a needle in my eye' than shovel snow in October..." 

He laughed and said, that yes, it was indeed pretty awful having a needle stuck in your eye.  Again YUCK. The understatement of the year I would say.

Turns out that his other eye is actually in pretty good shape and so it's legal to drive a car with mono-vision (better than 20/40 in one eye). He's always been a good driver (although he does like to drive fast - and in his younger years he paid quite a few speeding tickets). He and my mother split their time between their home and a cabin about 200 miles away so they log a lot of time in their cars.

When he first mentioned to my mother that his vision in one eye was blurry or that maybe he was seeing some spots, I was at the cabin with them and my four kids. 

"Your father is saying there is something wrong with his eye. You go in and ask him about it."

So I did and of course he didn't complain - said it was no big deal (most importantly it wasn't affecting his putting). And I did what everyone in my family does when we have a medical question.  I called my brother, "The Doctor."

What do people do who don't have someone like this in their family? I image its way less effective to call your brother, the horse groomer, or your sister, the NASA engineer, when dad can't see so great. No offense to any other professions, but when your parents are getting older it is really nice to have a Geriatrician in the family. He has also given most of us stitches, looked at our moles, reset a nose or two.

Besides being a good doctor, my brother inherited my mother's directness and also doesn't sugar coat anything.

"Tell him to call me first thing in the morning. He's got to come home and be seen.  Immediately."

So I did the second thing that everyone in the family would do next, I felt guilty. I felt like I had tattled on my dad to my brother, which was of course never my intention, but now Dad would have to call his son and have a conversation about the trouble with his eye.

I didn't sleep very well that night and the next morning my dad showed up on my deck, not dressed in his cabin work jeans, but cleaned up in nice pants and a collared shirt.  He had indeed talked to The Doctor first thing in the morning and my brother had gotten him in to see a specialist that afternoon. He looked sad.  I felt bad.  But we both knew that it was for the best.

No one prepares us for this in our lives. One day you're a child being protected by your parents and then suddenly you wake up as a a child who feels terribly protective of your parents.  I love my parents and I want them to be around for a long, long time.  But its uncomfortable to feel like you're stepping ever closer to their toes. 

As a parent of small children myself, its hard to image that one day these kids will feel this same way about me, that they might feel somehow responsible for choices I'm making for how I'm living my life.  Right now the biggest conflict we have is about picking up clothes. It seems a long way off and yet I know that it isn't.

Here is the crux of the issue: For most of us, parenting starts as a dictatorship in the family and I suppose we all want it to become a democracy.  But a healthy democracy is hard. The biggest challenge is that, at the core, it is about freedom.  Sometimes we can influence, sometimes we can challenge, but in the end we have to respect the fact everyone has to make their own choices. Everyone gets a vote.

I think this is at the forefront of my thoughts because driving is a huge freedom.  And I can sympathize with the fear of losing control of this important aspect of daily life. But this seems to be one of the hardest parent-child conversations. How do you know when to say when?

I'm not a big fan of the "She only drives in her neighborhood, or to church or to the hair salon..." Because if your eyesight, reflexes or memory isn't safe for driving then driving in your neighborhood only ensures that you will know the person you hit.

While they are still trying to treat his eye, my dad is talking about not driving at night. My mom can still drive so it doesn't have the kind of impact it might in another situation. I'm sure this will encourage them to entertain at their house more, which they love to do. They'll adapt, they always do.

And now my dad can say on authority, it can't be worse than sticking a needle in your eye.