expect the worst, I always say

I dragged my ass out to Elyria yesterday, having this inner dialogue as I drove that was really just me listening to me complain. I didn't want to go to Elyria, my dad was going to give me a hard time about some things we had discussed on the phone the day before, the banks and post office would be closed, we wouldn't get enough done in the time I had there. As it turned out, everything I thought was wrong. Well, the banks and post office were closed, but other than that...

When I got to my dad's house, the concerns he had expressed to me the day before were gone. (They may come back, I know.) We picked up his new eyeglasses and had them fitted. That took almost no time at all, and he liked them so well that he left them on for the rest of the day, even though he had worn his old glasses for reading, only. After lunch, we went back to the house, and I loaded my car with some books he wanted to give me, and some paintings I wanted to have.

The most important thing we did yesterday, however, was sign all the papers - so many papers - and put down a security deposit for his studio apartment at Wesleyan Village. Dad will be moving there February 1st. His third-floor "apartment" consists of one large, sun-filled room and an ample bathroom. The room's two large windows face west and overlook a couple of shuffleboard courts, the small patio homes that are part of the Village, and past those, the tops of trees in a small woods that leads down to the bank of the Black River. This is where I have wanted him to live since we first visited Wesleyan Village. I am deeply satisfied. I hope Dad is, too.