Eleven o’clock at night, and Dad’s reading light burned above his recliner, with Dad comfortably settled in, intently focused on a book. I felt very tired and wanted to be in bed an hour before, what with my 6:00 a.m. wake time routine.  Voiced echoes of “back to normal” and “climb the stairs” raced chaotically in my brain.  Daring to interrupt his reading, I asked carefully if we could have a conversation.  “Of course,” he said pleasantly, plainly happy to be home.  I explained to him how frightened I felt of him attempting to climb the stairs in the middle of the night, and how traumatized I felt from weeks of pre-hospital hauling him up the stairs with a gate belt and easing him down the stairs with the gate belt (he does not remember this), and I asked him, please, for his commitment to not climb the stairs tonight, and suggested now would be an excellent time to go to sleep, when Mom and I were going to sleep, being both so tired, so we did not need to worry about him moving safely around in the night.  He had come home just that day, after all.  “I am going to climb the stairs,” he asserted with confidence, “but I will not do it tonight.  I know my limits, and I am not going to be stupid.”  “Stupid” is a word that simply could never ever describe Dad.  “Super-intelligent,” yes.  “Super-determined,” absolutely.  But I have watched Dad dozens of times push himself beyond his capacity, with the predictable collapses that followed, and wondered if he really did know his limits, or rather knew what his limits used to be, or what he wanted them to be.  Still, physical therapists had been working him hard, and the idea of him being newly cognizant of his current limits was plausible.  With no further argument, Dad shuffled to his downstairs bedroom with a “good-night,” his book and a bag of mixed nuts in hand, while I stepped up the stairs.  The next morning, a Sunday, with the new CNA’s arrival, Dad expressed his understandable desire for a shower, which meant, of course, climbing the stairs.  I sat down with him again and practically yelled at him out of my fear of his falling down the stairs.  He deferred (after the CNA demurred), and accepted a sponge bath instead.  But on Monday, day three at home, after I left for work, the CNA helped him up the stairs to the shower—how wonderful and liberating that shower must have felt—and back down again, without incident, and I was glad I had not been there, and I was glad the CNA had felt sufficiently comfortable helping him, and that the story for that day had a happy ending.  True to his word, he indicated to the caregiver on Tuesday that he felt too weak to attempt the stairs.  And with all this my tension eased somewhat.  But I knew, as I have not known before, that now was the time to install the obscenely-expensive stair lift, and that only with the stair lift could we eliminate the issue of stair climbing and substitute constant dread and risk with comfort and ease and safety and freedom and independence, if not accomplishment.  As I myself plopped down the steps to discuss stair lifts with Mom and Dad, grasping the wood handrail, my hand suddenly slipped where the housecleaner had oiled the wood, and I caught myself without falling, and I pictured Mom grasping the railing and leaning out over the stairs to let her arthritic legs follow after, and I pictured Mom’s hand slipping on the greasy handrail and Mom going down, down, the stairs with nothing to stop her, and I knew the stair lift was her safe solution as well.  Straightaway, I ran for a spray bottle of kitchen degreaser and wiped the handrail squeaky grippy clean.