geriatrics in wonderland

Today my parents became members of Costco, a discount mega-store that requires membership. One can buy almost anything at Costco, from groceries, to furniture, to electronics, and probably even funeral arrangements. In fact, if funeral arrangements are available from there, this might come in handy for my parents one day. Knowing how horribly expensive funerals are, I've studiously avoided investigating just how much they will cost until I must.

Though last weekend, you may recall, was a nightmare of ambulences and hospital waiting rooms and hard decisions waiting to be made, today was chaotic in a more light-hearted way. My parents are among the world's great shoppers. If they knew they had 24 hours to live, I have no doubt that they would spend it shopping for things they did not need. They still wholeheartedly embrace this activity, though I limit somewhat how much money they spend and on what.

Costco was the stuff of dreams for them. First of all, there are the samples. Samples of all kinds abound, so that by the time you make it around the store, you have consumed a microbuffet of soup, appetizers, fish, chicken salad, corned beef, ravoli, veggie patties, fruit, and dessert, with only the distraction of a sports drink to pollute the palate. My mother, who will not eat the food people thoughtfully prepare for her (including me, when I fix holiday dinners or treats), gobbles everything handed over to her in a paper cup with a spork, barely stopping to ask what it is. And she finishes most of it as well, while I well know that if someone handed it to her on a plate, she would have nothing to do with it.
My father, while also a consumer of goods, particularly edible ones, admires with wide eyes the wonders of the consumer marketplace, the soft towels, the mysterious technological items he knows nothing about (more of which proliferate at every second). He used to be an electrician, who loved to invite all the children of the neighborhood into the basement, where he would gleefully electrocute hotdogs impaled on sterilized nails, slather them with mustard and relish, and encase them in the crysalyis of a bun. No wonder children used to come to the door asking, "Can Morris come out to play?"
When he was not in his monster phase, he made a wonderful playmate, but one never knew when the mood would turn, his brow would darken, and all the children gathered in our house would flee, as from an impending twister, the vagaries of his mood.
But now that he lives in the perpetual high noon of medicated bliss, those days are past, thank goodness. He merely enjoys. Costco was a treat for him. While he could not buy the 50 inch tv (and indeed did not need to, since there is a bigger one in the house where he lives, right next door to his room), he liked knowing it was there, and that he owned the privilege to look at it anytime he wished.
I suppose this is one more place we can go for our field trips. It reminds me of when my son was small, and every place we went was a discovery and a wonderment--almost every place, that is. Now they are grateful just to leave the confines of their room, comfortable though it is. It is gratifying to know we have another stop for our weekly perigrinations.