Most people don’t return to their childhood homes, and feel the tug of youthful dreams like wet breath on the nape of the neck.  I’m not one of them. My Dad has lived in this house my entire life. I came home from this house and someday will return with Dad’s ashes. The line between where my Dad ends and this house begins, erased.

Some say he is frugal, others say he is afraid of change. What can not be contested is: Dad never spent a dime unless he was forced. And even then he kept an eye out for a deal. When the dry Colorado air pitted the glue that attached to the plywood to his laminate counters, he drove two towns over to an upscale countertop store. Dad sorted through their discounted remnants and found a shiny stone with flecks of orange. He considered this a win since the veins of orange matched the color of his carpet almost perfectly. And his carpet will last a lifetime. At least, his lifetime.

When he bought the place in 1960 the burnt orange carpet must have pushed the boundaries of taste even then. The unlevel looped piles of wool have been crushed into odd patterns by cigarette burns, couch legs, and water leaks. The bathrooms have floor-to-floor carpet, if you can imagine. His floors have become a hodgepodge of crusty, matted areas interspersed with concrete, evidence of sections that just couldn’t be saved.

The original owners were prescient about trends and put in a gas stove. Now it gives off an intermittent rotten egg scent, an homage to a tiny leak the gas company can never find. Dad claims he can’t smell it anymore.

No matter how many times I vacuum the upstairs carpet, the air comes alive with dust as the sun shines in. If you pat his old weathered chairs dust bunnies puff up like a space scene from my favorite IMAX movie.

Just as dog owners start to look like their dogs, Dad has begun to look, smell and act like his house.

At eighty-three, he insists on skiing, probably because he loves it but also because he qualifies for the Silver Pass, which gives him a two thousand dollar discount. Aspen Ski Company offers the Silver Pass to anyone seventy or older and crazy enough to ski.  Dad doesn’t pay for equipment. The local rental place will give him skis, boots and poles for free each year; owning a ski lodge has its perks.

One of his greatest joys is to take groups on the mountain and show them where to ski like the locals. He’s a stickler on ski etiquette. Dad feels passionately that you must wait at every fork for the whole group, the skier in front has the right of way – unless Dad’s the one in back- and Dad is the universal leader of the pack. Other ski manners are unimportant such as: whether lift lines should merge, whether ski boundary signs mean anything, and if you need to help someone that’s fallen if they aren’t in your group. Dad’s worn his old yellow ski jacket almost forever. The yellow is bright so that even in a white out his group can find him.

After years of smoking Marlboro Reds, Dad suddenly gave up. Now when I snuggle in for a hug, he no longer smells of woody cigarettes. Instead, his sweaters hold the smell of his catheter and a potpourri of old body functions.

After a week in the hospital, where we’d get one step forward only to realize another part of Dad had sprung a leak, he came home.  Dad refused to wear clothes to check out of the hospital.  The PICC line tore at his arms and his catheter tore at his privates. He wouldn’t hear of wearing the hospital gown. He wore his blue and white checked boxers accessorized by a urine bag attached to his leg. Once home, he refused help out of the car. His catheter bag was no longer yellow but strawberry red. He dismissed the color: stop looking at it.

Dad walked up the wooden railroad plank stairs he’d installed over fifty years ago.  His eyes welled.

“I’m going to miss this place.” He said.