At 85, Art is a youngster compared with my 101-year old father. For breakfast, he’d have the waffles, Dad wanted oatmeal and poached eggs, all easy to chew.
Saturday at the retirement home means a two-hour drive each way for me. The breakfasts are routine, except for who is assigned to sit with us. Today, it was Art, a two-week resident newbie.
At the end of his Korean War service, Art’s home became the hospital for a full year. When he was released, he was still a teenager with no job skills.
He took a vocational skills test and discovered he possessed a hidden, latent talent: sorting.
Art could sort anything. He could detect the minutest differences. Sizes. Colors. Shapes. Anything. Think it’s tough to tell one leaf from another? Art doesn’t; he’s a born sorter.
His unique skill landed him a job as a trainee in a jewelry company where he was given plenty of stuff to sort: all of them diamonds. Thousands of them, and they all needed sorting by color, cut, size, quality.
His proficiency eventually made a way for him in the jewelry wholesale market. His skills had brought him into the limelight, into the big time, and into one of the most exclusive communities of Los Angeles.
He lived there all by himself. His wife had left him fifty years ago, though they have still never divorced.
Halfway through Art’s waffle breakfast, Edna, stopped by the table to greet us. She stood directly next to Art. But Art couldn’t see her. He only turned his head when he heard her voice.
Macular degeneration has stolen most of Art’s once-legendary gift of visual discernment. He feels lost in his new environment and misses his former neighborhood. He could have become a bitter man.
After breakfast, I fixed his television for him. A baseball fan, Art was suffering withdrawal. When I got it to work, he pumped his fists in victory, and we hugged triumphantly.
“It’s been a good day,” he explained, “for two reasons. First, you fixed my TV so I can watch The World Series! Second, because your dad called me an Old Geezer. Because that’s what I call myself! I love that! We Old Geezers gotta stick together!”