The filing cabinets

Sometimes when I visit mum and dad, there’s not much happening. Other times they’re in the middle of a “project” of some kind. Yesterday was a project sort of day. I was chatting to mum as she heated lunch on the stove when Dad’s voice called out from the verandah “Where’s that sewing machine oil?” Mum headed off to get said oil. “Your father is trying to get the bike pump working again” she explained upon return, as if that provided clarification. With imaginings of Dad taking up sewing now adjusted to the prospect of him dragging a disused bicycle that nobody remembers owning out of the garage and incorporating cycling into his daily exercise routine, I suspected I still didn’t have the full picture. 

“It’s the trolley” offered Dad, “the tyres have gone flat”. A trip downstairs further enlightened me. There, in the middle of the table tennis room, was one of Dad’s old filing cabinets with the base of a removalist-quality trolley under it. The trolley tyres were indeed quite flat. “It doesn’t work with the tyres all flat. There’s no momentum”. Dad was disappointed, but undeterred. Dad had always been able to solve practical problems like this, even if his solutions were sometimes a little “unconventional” and definitely always low cost. Inevitably the end result was highly embarrassing to us as teenagers because Dad valued function over form. Dad’s ability to find workarounds for problems that arise has been an asset along his journey with dementia. 

Now that I understood the end-of-project outcome and the intended theory of change, we returned to Step 1 (resurrecting the bike pump) with renewed enthusiasm. Mum and I were given the task of testing the freshly oiled pump. Sadly, regardless of whether the little plastic lever was up or down, no air was flowing and the dial on the little glass face wasn’t moving either. But this was not an insurmountable problem, as Dad soon emerged from the garage with two more bike pumps to try. “That one’s ancient” mum scoffed, looking at the rustier of the two “it’ll never work”. “It’ll probably be the one that does work” was Dad’s indignant reply, and sure enough the most rusty and spider-web-covered pump was the one that sprang into action with a satisfying burst of air and the dial jumping about with vigour. 

Once I’d pumped up both trolley tyres (Step 2) we were ready for Step 3, which was to wheel the now-empty filing cabinets out to the front of the house ready for council cleanup. Assessing the combined physical capacity amongst the 3 of us, I decided that it would be better to open the glass doors at the back of the table tennis room and guide our consignment up a few very gradual and manageable outdoor steps and along the driveway beside the house rather than trying to get them up a flight of internal stairs and through the house. The glass doors hadn’t been opened in possibly a couple of decades, so there was a bit of a process of finding the keys, wiggling the bolts back to life again, and moving a few pot plants out of the way. 

We just needed to fashion a ramp at the step from the room to the patio, and mum solved that problem with a piece of wood that happened to be hiding behind one of the filing cabinets in wait for such a moment as this. We then settled into a rhythm of me wheeling each filing cabinet past the table tennis table to the ramp, and guiding it down the ramp with Dad stationed outside ready to “catch” it. Then Dad manoeuvred it carefully up the garden steps while mum or I held on to the bottom of the filing cabinet and the other carried Dad’s walking stick in case he needed it for the walk back. My phone was within reach, poised ready to capture this momentous achievement on film. 

Once the task was completed, and the glass doors pulled shut again, it was time for a cuppa and a sit down. Even mum decided to have a cup of tea, given the significance of the moment, and we exchanged stories of one another’s efforts amid moments of challenge and uncertainty. Buoyed by our recent achievements, mum thought we could also deal with a letter from council about a new way to pay rates. And so it was that by the time we embarked on our afternoon walk, we’d solved two significant household problems and had zero injuries to report (notwithstanding Dad’s near miss when getting a bit too confident with the final filing cabinet). It felt like there was nothing we couldn’t do.