03 | April | 2014 | Chronicles of an Anglo Swiss

Look out your back window or door — describe what you see, as if you were trying to convey the scene to someone from another country or planet.

Garden at dad's place

Another déjà vue I think, but being a regular customer of daily prompt, they do re-occur. So I decided to show my dad’s new back window in London instead of mine again. My dad is more than a golden oldie, more a super golden oldie and with his 98 years. I was in London last week helping him to settle in a new home. It is a wonderful place for him. There are 42 separate apartments all connected to a carer that calls in daily.

His bed is made, his apartment is regularly cleaned. He has a modern bathroom, kitchen and living room. Is he happy? Of course not, he is 98 years old and it is his right to complain. If everything is perfect, you still have to complain. He has always lived in a house and in the last couple of years was dependent on some good people that helped him. He can no longer walk so well and very rarely left his house. I asked him on the phone today (I am now back home in Switzerland), how he is now settling in. The answer “well I just have to put up with it”, but that is not being angry or annoyed, that is the prerogative of being a senior citizen. If you lose your independence, you lose a lot. Everyone is doing their best to care, but do not let them know that everything is OK. I know as a daughter, far away from my dad and not being able to do things myself, that he is now in the best place possible for him. I have contact with his carer, an angel in disguise, whose job it is to make sure my dad has no problems. Growing old is not fun. The slow motion effect is creeping in on me and Mr. Swiss and we still have approximately 20 years to go until we are 90 and who knows how we will react.

Back to todays’s theme: I am showing the view from my father’s window in his new home. He looks onto a small garden/park. He lives in an atrium type place so the buildings on the other side also belong to the building where he is now living. At the moment it is spring and the daffodils are flowering. There are some park benches and Vicky, his angel carer, told me that when the warmer weather arrives, she will take my dad down to the park in a wheelchair and he can sit outside enjoying the surroundings. He will also be able to eat outside and will share the park with others that live where he is.

To enter my father’s place you ring the doorbell. My father lifts a telephone, asks who is there and presses a lever to let you in. Unfortunately modern technics are a bit above his head and he had a problem with pressing the button to open the main door. He got the bit about speaking on the telephone, but thought if his own personal door was open that would do the trick. Eventually I was given a key to let myself in at the main door until he got the hang of it.

There are a couple of feeding stations for birds outside, although empty as the birds now find their own food. Those English birds are unique. I saw a couple of magpies, but mainly there are pigeons. Pigeons are everywhere in Europe, but these English pigeons all seem to be on the larger size. They are mega-pigeons; big, fat and feathery. I do not know what they eat, but I had the feeling that a cat would not stand a big chance of survival if there was a confrontation. I do not think that the cat would be carrying the pigeon victim away in its mouth, but the pigeon would pounce and fly off with the cat. I took a couple of photos of these super mega pigeons. I wondered if they had escaped from some sort of laboratory where they had been exposed to radiation or eaten super vitamin food.

There is a large tree outside and I was reminded of Alfred Hitchcock and his film “The Birds”. The pigeons were distributed all over the branches just sitting and waiting and watching. I hope my dad keeps his window closed, you ever know.

I also noticed in England that nature seemed to be a little ahead of Switzerland. Where I have bushes that are only thinking about flowering, particularly my kerria japonica, the English version is already in full bloom.

So now dad is settled in his new place, his thoughts still returning to his old house and days of independence. It gives me food for thought, wondering how I will react in his position and age.

Daily Prompt: Looking Out My Back Door

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