Line Dance Sandwich 

“Let’s take that Line Dance Lesson down the street”. It’s from 6-7pm, two blocks away. Easy, right?

My wife and I have more complex lives than other couples. While all our children have flown the coop, a couple of eggs have hatched in our nest. We are raising two grandchildren, 7 and 8 at the moment. They are independent: yesterday they made their own lunch (packaged Mac and Cheese and Ramen Noodles).  They are bright, learning to be readers: moving past “The Elephant’s Child” to “Encyclopedia Brown”; and I am waiting very impatiently for them to move on to “Wrinkle in Time”, and “Harry Potter”. We are engaged (again) with elementary schools, and homework, and we’re always looking for baby sitters. We moved to a larger house from our “retirement” home.

But that’s not all. We also have my wife’s father, Don, soon to be 89. He has dementia and can’t live alone. He and I, along with his little brother (77), used to go on long bike rides (40- 50+ miles). Now he will walk around the block on nice days, and talks about the weather report.  He mostly watches TV, but on Monday, Wednesday and Friday I take him to 6am spin class. He has bad hearing, bad vision, and no peripheral vision. As a result, he has to walk carefully – shuffling slowly – so any activity where he’s along takes extra time. He also has to turn his head to see something, and the women in spin class have been very patient when he turns to look at them. He has the same jokes every day, “Do you think they can make the music louder?” “Are we there yet?” “(sings) Back in the saddle again” “Another day, another dollar….in debt”. He likes to be useful and has decided that it’s his job to do the dishes.

This morning Sue had to run some errands, so when I went down to make breakfast, Don was watching the kids watch TV. He saw me put a pan on the stove and get some eggs out. I offered to make some for him, but he declined. Instead he started putting the dishes away from the dishwasher. This is his way of making contact with us. I have very conflicting thoughts when I see him holding a utensil and trying to figure out where to put it, while he’s standing in front of an empty pan that’s getting hotter and hotter. Usually, I let him figure it out – unless he asks, or unless something’s about to get hurt. As he finished putting the top rack away he said, “This dish isn’t clean”. He put that dish back in. The bottom rack, he decided, was all dirty. Sometimes we pull dirty dishes out of the cupboard. Sometimes we wash dishes twice. This chore makes him feel needed and happy, though, which far outweighs a crowded kitchen or an unexpectedly dirty dish.

The combination of the two care-taking jobs is tough. First is the sheer variety and volume of food that we need to purchase, store and prepare. Sue almost always does this, and it consumes a lot of her time. The kids like different things than us, and Don has his own dietary issues. Every meal is a compromise, and someone is usually unhappy. The way the kids play together is sometimes misleading to Don, whose perceptions and thinking are weak, and he often feels that he needs to intervene, which never turns out well. If we are upstairs – working, writing, doing laundry – Don sometimes thinks we’re gone, which means it’s his turn to watch the kids. So he sits and watches them watch TV. This creeps them out, and they react badly. Sometimes they try to escape upstairs to their room, but Don takes his self-appointed baby-sitting role seriously and will climb the stairs to check on them. This creates a lot of stress for everyone.

My wife and I have been able to get away alone a few times this year – we are lucky to have some family support for Don and the kids. But our social life is mostly separate. She has her literary club, and I have the Masons, and we take turns watching the household for each other. So, how can we do a line dance class?

Both regular baby-sitters are busy or out of town. The kids could handle being left alone. Don could handle being left alone. At 4:30 we started problem solving.

1.       Sneak out – Don may think we’re upstairs and leave the kids alone. But that means leaving both cars, and it’s really too cold to walk.

2.       Put the kids upstairs, and tell Don they went to bed. Then sneak out.

3.       Take the kids in the van with the DVD player, and park it in front of the line dancing place with a movie playing. Not economical. Not practical.

4.       Take the kids line dancing. 

5.       Take Don line dancing (he may not handle the kids being alone).

None of these gives us honest couple time.

At 4:50, Sue ran to get Chinese for dinner, and we sat down together – the five of us – at 5:20. At 5:50 we looked at each other, realizing there’s just no way to get there from here.

But we learned from this: next time, we’ll start planning sooner. If we want to do something specific, at a specific time, we need very careful planning. Don’t get me wrong – we still have spontaneous moments – but they don’t often involve leaving the house together.