Sunday, November 15, 2009

Fiddling Around

As promised, I took my parents to see the last matinee performance of Fiddler on the Roof at the college, along with all the other members of the University Synagogue choir. As you may recall, one of our own was performing, and was understudy to the lead in the show. Unfortunately for him, the lead actor stayed hale and whole for every performance, and Steve didn't get to perform.
This was a bit of an adventure. I had never taken my parents to a play, especially one as long as this one (2 1/2 hours), and mom gets antsy even at the moves. She doesn't hear well, and is very confused at this point about what is going on, but she loves old songs, and she knows these songs well. We went to see the original off Broadway when I was a kid. She did fine till the intermission, and then she wanted to go home, and kept loudly talking and complaining until I got a chair and sat beside her. Because of my dad's walker, we had to sit in seats other than the ones we had tickets for, one behind the other on the far right side. Then we went out to dinner. That's always a risky proposition because there is very little she will eat these days. I know she likes steak, but I wasn't about to pay $16. for a small piece of strip steak at Mimi's. So I ordered her pot roast, on the advice of my dad. Since it came with soup and dessert, I figured she'd eat something, even if she didn't like the entree. But she wouldn't eat any of it, except dessert. We ended up taking it home. It was exhausting. I haven't taken her anywhere for an entire afternoon aside from shopping for some time. She doesn't remember how to get the toilet to flush, get paper towels from the towel dispenser, or how to get a roll of toilet paper to unroll. It just kept spinning round and round without giving her any paper till I spun it the other way.
Just now, at 8:30 PM, my dad called, after I dropped them off, saying he couldn't find his glasses. He had them with he got out of the car. I'm sure they are right on his dresser where they belong, since he is going to bed. Sigh.

4 comments:

Lou said...

That poor old girl. What an afternoon for both of you. :(

Robbi N. said...

That's true. My dad had a good time though.

liz said...

Oy (sp?) I don't know how you handled that outing with humor to spare. You are a daughter Tevye would be proud of ;)

Robbi N. said...

You can spell Oi that way... you're transliterating from Yiddish, after all, and no one agrees about how exactly to do that, as with other languages not written in the same alphabet as English.
Thanks though!