Taping Ankles In A Landslide

So when Dad pinballed around a laundromat last week, dizzy from the Parkinson’s, bouncing from dryer to washer and finally headbutting an old brown-paneled soda machine offering Mello Yello for a $1.25, I didn’t realize just how much I’d built my life around the old athletic trainer … “For starters what in God’s name were you doing in a laundromat at 6 o’clock on a Friday?” Dad claims he needed his pants hemmed, which sorta makes sense for an 80-year old prone to falling. The ER doc said his injuries were by no means life threatening, even though dad looked a bit like Apollo after Drago’s punches.  “What’s the other guy look like?” doc quipped. The humor helps with Parkinson’s. I told dad he ought to just use it to his advantage and steal bagels from the bin at Brookside Deli, and if he gets caught—heck just blame the disease. It made him laugh, which was a good thing because two days later he stumbled into a bed frame in NYC, reopening his leg wound and quickly turning a quiet Sunday into a Curt Schilling bloody sock moment. I was suddenly forced to play medical response, which the kids say must have been terrifying for dad since there was that time I ran out of the house carrying our daughter bleeding from a falling dresser, fully intending to run all the way to the hospital since the minivan wouldn’t start….

…But I’m getting better in crisis as I get older, washing, taping and wrapping the wound like dad used to when I would trip off the backdoor stoop every summer.  I must have learned something from the old athletic trainer, because, if you ask me, my ACE bandage wrapping was world-class first aide, ‘cept maybe that I never changed the bloody sock. But maybe I can pursue an athletic training career if this journalist meets researcher thing doesn’t pan out….I lifted dad up and then my saint of a bride and I carefully led the warrior to his seat two blocks east to 54 Below Studio to hear his granddaughter Sophie sing here about being ‘fraid of changin’. It’s funny, listening to those classic Stevie Nicks lyrics with dad by my side – just like he always was when we coached the kids together or on the day I got married—or like all those times I followed him to games when he was wrapping twisted ankles—I realized I’d built my life around you…