Page 34 of The Christmas Box

My instinct is to say I’m sure I can handle it—since she’s much smaller than me, downright petite, in fact—but I hold my tongue. I always step out when she or Helen helps him to the bathroom, and I guess I don’t really know how that goes, but maybe the fact that he can’t maneuver himself at all didn’t hit home for me before right now.

I push him out through a wet, snow-plowed parking lot, and when I open the truck’s passenger door, Gabbi leans down over Dad and he wordlessly places his arms around her neck. “Here we go,” she says, hefting him to his feet. “Now we’re gonna turn, Tom.” After she positions him near the seat, together they get him up into it.

Closing him inside, the small woman in scrubs and a fleece zip-up asks me, “Think you can manage it?”

“Yeah,” I tell her, softly, surely—but I wonder if she can see that I’m a little dumbfounded. He’s weaker than I realized. And she’s stronger, both in ways you can see and ways you can’t.

She shows me how to fold up the wheelchair and says, “You two have fun.”

The decision to go early was a good one because there are only a few spaces left when we arrive. The closest is marked handicapped, and despite not having one of those official things hanging from my mirror, I take it. Normally I would never do that, but if my father doesn’t qualify as handicapped, who does?

“Well, will you just look at all the people,” Dad declares, pointing out the window. “And that tree! Sure is pretty. Whole street is, in fact.”

Until this moment, I never really noticed how all the storefront windows are lined with colored lights, or took in the pine boughs wrapped around the streetlamps. Glimpsing it through the eyes of a man who hasn’t left his nursing home in weeks, a man about to have his last Christmas on this earth, I can see the beauty in the bright, twinkling lights in a way I couldn’t have only an hour ago.

After I get the wheelchair from the truck bed, I open his door and ask, “You ready?”

“More than!”

He thinks I’m talking about the festival, but I meant ready for us to maneuver him into the chair.

Turning toward me, he doesn’t hesitate to loop his arms around my neck, same as he did with Gabbi. Then I lean in and grip his shockingly-skinny hips as he slides gently from the seat to a standing position on the sidewalk. It’s the closest we’ve been, physically or otherwise, since I was a kid. It’s almost like we’re slow-dancing. He smells like Irish Spring and the coffee he probably drank with dinner. He’s lighter than I even expected. And it’s all very awkward for me, but the fact that he’s clearly gotten used to such help and takes it in stride makes it easier. Lowering him into the chair feels strange, backward—the parent becomes the child.

What I didn’t factor in when taking the spot directly across the street from the park was that I’d have to wheel him down to a corner for handicap access. Suddenly I have profound admiration for caregivers and handicapped people who have to work so much harder to do the things most us take for granted.

As I wheel him toward the nearest crosswalk, past the Lucas Building—where I left a light on in back—he glances through the plate glass window. “Say, why don’t you take me in there, let me get a look at your work.”

I’ve forgotten to snap the pictures he asked for, and wheeling him into his brother’s old place seems easy enough. I pull my keys from my pocket and, though it takes a little finagling with the chair, I get him inside and flip on the lights.

“Still early in the project,” I tell him, then start pointing and explaining. “Both walls will be lined with cabinetry and shelves from front to back when I’m done.”

He begins examining some cabinet doors I’ve just finished, laid across two sawhorses. “Damn fine workmanship,” he says, running his index finger along one edge. “Gonna be real nice, I can tell.”

He sounds proud, like any normal father might, and despite thinking I didn’t care about that, it makes me feel good inside.

I almost say I’ll bring him back to see it when it’s done, but then I think better of it. It’ll probably be only another few weeks, but what if he’s too frail by then?

“Ready for the festival?” I ask a little while later.

“Sure thing. But I’m glad we stopped here.”

“Me, too.” Then, thinking about how much he enjoyed the Main Street lights, I tell him, “Wait right here—I need to run upstairs for a sec.”

Heading up, I pet the dog—who I finally remembered to leave a dim lamp on for before I left—and then I walk over and plug in the tree lights.

By the time Dad and I near the park entrance, busy with people moving this way and that, their talk and laughter echoing, lights glowing and holiday music playing, I begin to experience an old, familiar sensation, something in my chest expanding as we grow closer. It’s…anticipation.

It’s what I felt as a kid walking into an amusement park or even just the county fair. I have no idea where it sprung from—maybe I’m still seeing it all through my father’s eyes. But whereas during that tree-lighting party I wanted to stay as far away as possible, right now I’m surprisingly okay with being in the middle of it all.

“Well, hey there, Tom—how ya doing?” asks a man I don’t know. I stop pushing so Dad can say hello.

Which is when a woman I vaguely recognize from my childhood but can’t place greets him with, “Tom! It’s good to see you out and about.”

“You both remember my boy, Travis,” Dad says, his voice brimming with pride.

Each of them tells me who they are, and I pretend to remember as Dad goes on. “He was nice enough to bust me out of the manor tonight so I could kick up my heels a little.” He laughs at his own joke and the rest of us do, too.

We don’t make it much farther before more people are greeting Dad, asking him how he’s feeling, saying all the right things. It’s kind of like taking Marley into a rest home—you’ve just started moving forward again when someone else stops you. But this is why we came and it’s fine with me.

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