"I SAID," she blared, "A PERSON COULD MAKE SHADOW PUPPETS ON THE WALLS IN HERE!" My mother was at her wit's end. Dad wasn't hearing her early morning ramblings. He wasn't hearing much of anything. The plane ride to our Florida cottage had temporarily jammed his always delicate audio so that even his hearing aids were useless. He'd spent the week deftly mimicking normal conversation in a one-sided sort of way. He could tell, he said, whether the sounds coming out of the faces around him were friendly or not. Friendly sounds got a nod and a pleasantry. More serious conversation required some cooperation – mainly strenuous attention to volume and articulation on the part of the conversee. The effort involved served as a kind of content editor – there could be no subtle exchanges about the meaning of life, for instance. Declarative statements amplified best. All of which painfully cramped the freewheeling whimsy that is my mother's trademark style.

In stentorian tones she continued "LIKE CHARADES! A PERSON COULD PLAY A GAME WITH SHADOW PUPPETS!" Dad knew some kind of gauntlet was being thrown down. He stumbled over to the dresser to find his superfluous hearing aids. "I'm not the man you married," he parried plaintively. "I can't hear you. The goddamned hearing aids. The plane ride. The rainy weather. The fluorescent light in the bathroom. The cold floor. The turn signal on the Lumina. The one-ply toilet paper." My mother was unappeased. She has long believed that my father is only pretending to get old to irritate her. "Descended from kings" she hissed to me to explain his obliviousness as we hustled around him after surgery once. "Oh for heaven's sake, Ralph," she muttered as she stomped out of the room.

I lay in bed in the room next to theirs reviewing the rules for a game of Charades. Book title. Three words. Third word Dragon. My Father's Dragon! Bingo!