Dad’s Jeans

Published In

〰️

Gemstone Piano Review

〰️

Great Lake Review

〰️

Published In 〰️ Gemstone Piano Review 〰️ Great Lake Review 〰️

My dad was the type of man to push away problems until they bit him on the nose and when he went over to my grandma’s house one day to see her sprawled out on the couch in his favorite “relaxin” jeans, it was the equivalent of a nibble.

He let her keep the jeans. She didn’t remember absconding with them, but was adamant that they were my recently deceased grandfather’s.

Why not let her stay in dreamland?

The next pair didn’t stay long before they went MIA. Rinse and repeat. Each time Dad bought a fresh pair, within days they would vanish from the house.

Grandma was a geriatric Robin Hood.

We tried locks and chains, but the old lassie was far too clever for that, even in her current state. She either had a vendetta against my father that involved swiping his denim or thought Grandpa was alive and storing his jeans at our home.

Dad was really bad at confrontation. You could call what he did giving into a delusion, but that didn’t matter. When he went to Costco and bought 100 pairs of their finest jeans, the only thing running through his head was the woman who raised him, and the comfort she might find.

I didn’t think Grandma was lucid enough to appreciate the gesture, but Dad kept it up, even played along sometimes, making the locks less difficult as she got worse.