The wounded giant.

  Seated on the balcony of a mission style hotel, I watch as palm trees bend and sway from the stiff wind in the courtyard below. The sound of water splashing in twin, 250-foot long, water fountains, nearly drowns out the sound of the palm fronds flapping wildly from the wind. The midnight air is comfortable, and carries a hint of jasmine and alyssum. The fountains have many lights which are changing colors in unison, illuminating the crystal clear water, causing the ripples to shimmer on the surface. It sounds like paradise, a resort in Mexico perhaps, however, if I look beyond the most distant palm trees who's trunks are spiraled with hundreds of white lights, I see two ribbons of light, red and white, moving in opposite directions.  It is interstate 5, somewhere in California's vast central valley.

  Inside the hotel room, all is quiet. Orion is passed out and Apollo is unwinding watching a movie; a sharp contrast from the car ride a few hours earlier. While driving on I-5, we watched a bright orange sun setting against a golden, cloudless horizon. The silhouettes of steel high voltage power line towers, looked like 100-foot tall giant stick-figures, marching in tandem to meet the sun where she touched pastel violet hills far off in the distance. Orion squealed with delight repeatedly from his carseat, while Apollo answered back matching pitch and decibel. The sound was deafening and almost spoiled the serenity of the setting sun which Melanie and I were trying to enjoy. This is the end result of driving nearly 2,500 miles in the past 11 days with little ones in the car.

 This last leg of our road trip was not planned but was an important one. Sixty hours ago, we left Santa Rosa for southern California, to visit my ailing father. My dad will be 82-years-old in a couple weeks. He is active and always on the go, and I have never known him to sit still for very long. He is one of the toughest people I have ever known. He never complains when he is sick or injured and has always kept moving when the same ailment would have left others flat on their backs. My dad has a giant's presence in any room and enjoys good conversation, story telling, political debates, and expressing his opinion whether you want to hear it or not. As you can imagine, when I hear my father is sick enough to be hospitalized, I know it has to be serious. I also know that he would not go to the hospital on his own, and it was my mother that dragged him there. My greek mother stands a mere 4 foot, 11 inches tall and is dwarfed by my fathers 6 foot, 1 inch frame, however, she can be very persuasive and forceful when needed.
  My father was hospitalized with heart failure, fever, loss of appetite, pain in his legs and hips, anemia, and low potassium, among other things. A whole battery of tests, and because of the perseverance of my greek mother, my dad was found to have an autoimmune disease, and is hopefully on the road to recovery. Our short trip to see him was both to be supportive and in hopes that seeing the grandchildren would lift my father's spirits. Because of some of the underlying conditions, visiting with my dad proved to be a real task. We were required to wear gloves and gowns and had to convince the nursing staff to allow Apollo and Orion into the room to see him. Fortunately, by Sunday afternoon, my father was discharged from the hospital with a diagnosis, direction, and a plan of action.

  I drove my dad and mom home from the hospital and I could tell that my dad was happy to finally be out of there and he was excited to be headed home. My parents live in the mountains. Their home is on a hillside, and consequently, there are thirty steps to get to their front door. As my father has too much pride to allow any one assist him, we watched helplessly as he climbed the steps slowly and deliberately, both hands grasping the hand rail on his right side, pulling himself up, while lifting his legs one by one. As hard as it was for me to watch, I imagine it was harder for him knowing that we were seeing him in this weakened state.
  As I needed to return home by sometime Monday morning, it was with heavy hearts that we departed my parents home and began the journey back to our own home. We would have liked nothing more than to spend a week with my parents helping them out while my dad began to mend. Alas, I find myself writing in the wee hours of the morning, instead of sleeping, trying to make some sense of our temporal existence, and our all too short visit with a wounded giant.