We spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day in Sanibel, Florida with my wife’s family, biking, beaching, birding. At least some of us were engaged in those activities. Flu laid a few of my nieces and nephews low and in their recovery time they came to know and memorize an infomercial for Scratch and Dent World, a discounted appliance store near Ft. Meyers where you could save a ton o’ money on scratched and dented refrigerators, stoves etc. Though I never saw the ad myself, my daughter’s impression of Lee, who wore a miniskirt and a knee brace, as if to prove some point, stays with me.

I was spending much of my time on my cell phone, dealing with twin family crises. My son had arrived from SF just before Christmas and seemed to be having a kind of meltdown before we boarded the plane. It turned out he had neglected to bring the right amount of medication with him (he takes a host of anti-depressant and anti-anxiety drugs, none of which seem to work particularly well) and though 21, a host of parental figures rallied to get him what he needed even as he repaid us with the gratitude we have come to expect, ie none).

Just before the plane left JFK I learned that my father had entered the ICU in Barstow, CA the night before, complaining of shortness of breath. He was hooked up to a ventilator for a few days even while my older brother and sister and one of my step-sisters drew straws to see who would go down there and deal with him. My father’s popularity with my younger brother and sister is like unto Stalin’s with the Russian Jews. So no straw-drawing there. I am somewhere in the middle, being the middle child, thinking I would find a way to Southern California if my dad was actually dying but not if he surprised everyone for the umpteenth time and lived to fight (and I do mean fight) another day.

And so he did. On the fourth day he sat up, pulled out the breathing tube and demanded some ice cream. My step-sister fled, handing over the feeding and caring of his dogs to my older brother who deserves candidacy for sainthood, given the abuse he has suffered from the old man over the years. Now Dad is in a convalescent hospital and scheduled to be released soon…unless his health goes the other way. My son, too, has righted himself — enough to be civil, enough to acknowledge he needs some help. Battered but not completely broken.

Hence Scratch and Dent World.