Savvy 13: "Home" Town

My home town has never been more beautiful than it is this week. The cherry trees are in full bloom, their petals trickling to the ground like fairy dust (or blizzard snow, for the would-be child who dares to reach up and shake a limb, who makes the soft petals land in her hair and tickle her nose). Lilacs. Pink. Lavender, white, perfume the air.
Even in the newer estates, the lilacs are thick and established. Maple and Oak trees arc over the streets that bear their name. Nothing is new here anymore. Not even the New Development - that garish collection of houses that sprang up over night the week after the old gnarled apple trees were hacked down and chipped. Those miles of orchard left not even a scar. Not even a stranded bee. It was here, I think. Or maybe just there. I thought I knew. The town doesn't care if I remember. It has aged with dignity and it has accumulated wealth. I couldn't live here if I tried. It wouldn't have me.
But it has my father. This is, after all, only my home town because my parents raised us here. And it cannot be less so because my father is dying here. He has not, it seems, been granted the favor of aging with style and savvy. The place where he is kept smells nothing of Lilacs. His cheeks are hardened in one round place, and caved underneath.
There was a time when he knew everyone in this town, and lived in his own Victorian house. Days when he could not leave his office for lunch, because he'd never get back in time. Main Street was his parlor. The High School teemed with children to whom he'd fed cheese steaks and tacos and watched play soccer and field hockey, tennis and lacrosse. He was known.
I visit my father in my home town, and something heavy sits on my chest. Does he know that this "home" where he is kept and washed and fed luke warm noodles is mere yards from the sledding hill where I cracked my tail bone? Where my brother got a bloody nose from a speeding Flexible Flyer? Has he seen the Lilacs? We are walking down the hall. He is wearing a sweater. The doors split open and we walk outside, he in his wheel chair, me driving. I do not sign him out. I do not stop. I push my father up the slope from the nursing home to the Main Street of my home town. The chair is not made for off-roading. Its wheels prefer waxed floors.
Up close, the sidewalks of my home town are cracking. Deep ruts have formed. The chair jolts and scrapes, and my father objects, but I do not turn back. We skirt around the chunks of concrete and carry on. I pick a lilac off of the old Seward house lawn. I pick a clover and lay it in my father's wasting lap, and we walk.
He remembers who owned each of these houses, but how many owners back? He wonders why in god's name that family painted the trim turquoise. He wakes up to the town, and it holds his mind, welcomes his attention. My father smiles. He says the town looks beautiful. And then he fades, just a little. Gets confused when a car drives by.
It's a Volvo dressed up like a BMW, and my father doesn't know the driver. She does not roll down her window, does not smile. But she is compelled to slow down. What a nuisance it must be to find a wheelchair on the road like this, in her town.
She lives in a beautiful town. This town, where my father is dying.
He tells me that he is not afraid. Of dying, that is. He is quite worried about the well-being of the wheel chair. He thinks we'd better head back to the home.