1am. Here we go again.
Dad had been sleepwalking on and off for his entire life. But, in recent years it had gotten worse. Especially after the divorce. At 50, he found himself single, with a 20 year old son living at home while in college, a career that he hates and the love of his love gone. Over that last few months it had grown to be an almost nightly thing.
Mostly he was making a poor attempt at cooking, which thank god he was too loud out because with a gas stove you never know if he's gonna leave the thing running or not.
Of course, I never tried to wake him. I'm not an idiot. I don't want to be murdered by accident. But I got pretty good at dealing with him while sleepwalking. The thing about sleepwalking is that people think the person walks around with their eyes closed fumbling around in the dark. Not the case. The person can be eyes wide open and have a full on conversation with you, but be asleep. That was my dad. He would slip back and forth between coherent and incoherent talk, but he seemed aware. Thats what made our latest encounter so weird.
I found myself in his bedroom. Usually it would be the living room or kitchen, but every once in a while he'd be making noise in the bedroom. I walked in, dreary and irritated. I had woken up maybe moments before.
"Hey, what's going on?" I said, not expecting a direct response. I was wiping my eyes as he responded.