In between all the work to get ready for the party and the work to get ready to go to a work conference to do more work...there is my father. My father that still isn't feeling better. His leg still pains him and movement is brief and strained. But that's not the nasty part. Not really.

He's started "loosing" it a bit. His anxiety levels are through the roof and many of the little problems associated with daily life are now too much. This is of course worsened by the pain...but the bottom line is that this injury has brought to light how much he was covering about his health.

I'm concerned. About his money, about his future, about his happiness. About a billion other things like that.

I'm concerned because he seems to have given up trying and his swings between being happy and having a relatively strong grip on reality are so very far from his downward spirals into depression and panic.

What am I trying to say here? I don't know I guess. There are very few things in life I hate as much as people answering "I don't know." Here is what I do know - and this takes a lot for me to say this in print.

My father will never be well enough again to travel abroad. He will never lay eyes on the Elgin marbles again. For me travel is safety. It's freedom from the limitations of my spiritual and emotional limitations.

This fills me with great sadness. Not for what he's lost exactly, as he can't really remember all that well seeing the marbles years ago, that's rather beside the point. Instead it's an emotion more akin to sorrow down deep inside, that place we don't go unless pressed, and I can't for the life of me tell you why.

I guess I just don't know.