Opening windows: first published 1997

We used to joke that he was part French-Canadian and part Maytag.  At 75, my father had survived three prostate operations.  A lifetime of smoking had left him with only the barest touch of emphysema.  He still did all his own housework, and rarely took so much as an aspirin.
   Yet the rugged appliance was, at last, showing some signs of wear.  When the doctors told him he needed a cataract operation, he had nowhere to turn.  He needed someone to take him home, and all his potential drivers were too old to do it safely or too young to take time off work.  I spared him the humiliation of having to ask and volunteered to come up and spend a couple of days.
   It was bright and brisk when I arrived, seasonably cool for July.  Good, I thought as I greeted him.  We can talk about the weather -- that ought to use up 10 minutes.
   He had lived in our house for 50 years.  Every corner brimmed with a memory of childhood birthday parties, teenage sleepovers or my own children giggling over something.  He said I could sleep in my mother's old room.
   Except for giving away her clothes, he hadn't done anything in there --all the knickknacks and necessities of her last year of life sat untouched.  This needs to be dealt with, I thought as I stowed my stuff.  But what would he replace it with?  He was a little old to be accumulating souvenirs.
   I chauffeured him to the hospital and sat in the waiting room.  He came down with a patch over his eye.   He said it felt fine.  When I drove over a curb trying to get us home, he didn't say anything.  Even two years ago, it would have been fodder for a lecture.
   Back at the house, we tiptoed around each other.  I tried to tell him about my world, but found it almost too much effort to explain life in the 90s to this fiercely '50s man.  When we talked about issues I found his once-sharp mind wandered a little.  He wasn't up on the latest doings in Concord; he saw only a vague outline.
   But other conversations, long in the past, were what really blocked us from talking.  There were the years of "You can do better," "That dress makes you look fat," and "How could you have been so stupid?"  Words that wove themselves into the fabric of my life, as surely as my bedtime prayers.
   On the second day I drove him back to the hospital to have the patch removed.  When he came downstairs from the outpatient clinic, he got into the passenger seat as if by habit.  "Let's go out to lunch," he said.  "I don't want you cooking today."
   I demurred, but he insisted he could afford it.
   We ordered from the specials of the day and made what small talk we could.  When the food came, I dug in; my father seemed to have forgotten his was there.  "I'm thinking about giving up the house," he said abruptly.  "I need to  make some plans, for when I can't keep it up any more.  I don't know whether to go into a retirement home or a nursing home or what.  But we need to think ahead."
   No we don't I thought.  It's too soon since Mom.
   I put down my fork.  "You're doing fine," I said.  "You're going to be around for a good long time.  We don't need to worry about it now."
   He looked unconvinced, but he knew by now that it takes two to have a conversation.  "Anyway, I want you girls to have the house," he said as he picked up his fork.  "You can sell it, or one of you can live there and buy the other one out.  But it goes to you."
   "This is good pie," I said.
   On the third day the weather turned and we experienced summer again.  I woke to sunshine streaming through the window.  It was already hot, and before I started packing, I decided to get some air.  I moved the ancient window crank, but it didn't budge.  My father had sealed the window shut, to keep the heat in and the cold out.
   First thing I do if I get this place, I thought, will be to open some windows.