A post in which I go out to dinner with Dad

Eve called me yesterday to put off dinner until tonight. She is out of town, and wanted to make sure Dad got out of bed (he doesn't always bother these days). I decided to wait until 2pm or so to call him, which I did. I also offered him the choice of places to eat. I figured that would be a refreshing change, since he seldom gets to decide what he wants to eat, and Eve generally makes the decision about 9:30am or so.

When I got to the house he was ready, although he was napping and I had to get him up to get him to the door. When I asked him what he wanted to eat, it seemed that he was just completely flummoxed. He hadn't had to decide what he wanted in so long, it just seemed to shut him down. He finally asked me, again, what I wanted, and when I suggested seafood he seemed relieved to have the suggestion. (He had mentioned Mexican, and while I would have loved it, there had been a critter-call at work today about left-over Mexican in the conference room. I had eaten a gorgeous and huge plate of nachos, but figured I really didn't need that twice in one day.) While were discussing that, there was a big *thud* outside the house. Dad thought there had been a bad accident (they live on a busy road), but when we walked outside no wreck was in evidence.

We were about to walk back in the house when I noticed that the mailbox was gone. Someone had swerved off the road, hit the ditch hard enough to knock a chunk out of the drainage pipe that ran under the driveway, hit the mailbox hard enough to take it off the post and rip the wheel-well out of the car, and apparently never stopped.

"It was a bunch of dirty Mexicans with no insurance!" Dad said. And I'm standing there thinking What the bloody hell?! Sometimes he just pulls things out of his head and I have no idea where they come from. I mean, we didn't see the car. There weren't even any tire tracks. I decided just to let it go. We got in the car and headed out for dinner, checking driveways and parking lots on the way, but didn't see anyone with a wrecked car stopping to change a tire. I remarked to Dad that I wished I knew what kind of tires they had. Those had to be good tires.

We ended up at Red Lobster for dinner. Dad likes it, and the food is pretty good. It's an old people place. I was able to jolly him out of his feisty mood after he called a guy about putting up a new mailbox. We enjoyed dinner, but he didn't eat very much. I ended up eating more of his dinner than he did.

Afterwards we went back to the house and visited for a while. I was a little worried things might not go as smoothly with Eve not there - she tends to fill in any possible gaps in the conversation, but it was fine. Dad and I have a greater appreciation of each other than we have before. In the middle of dinner, out of the blue, he stopped to say "I just want you to know how proud I am of the man you have become. I tell people all the time how proud I am of you." Wow. Heady stuff. And I never thought I would hear the like.