Either he's getting older or I am

My father is coming to visit me in this big city where use to live about 100 years ago. Okay maybe it was only 40 or 50 years ago. He’ll be staying a week. I’ll either meet him at the train station or he’ll take a cab to a bar near by where I work and then we’ll go to my house (only about 10 blocks from where he grew up). I’m gonna take him to visit his widowed Aunt on the weekend but will work during the week. I asked him what he was going to do the rest of the time and he said look up some old friends and relatives. That’s good, it’s about time, and he hasn’t done that in years. He’s got it all planned out. Well as far as plans go for my dad. Maybe he’ll call these people before he comes up, maybe not. I’m fairly sure he’ll call the transit authorities to figure out a rout, but maybe that will wait till he’s here too. After all it’s “His town”.
I felt this little stab of panic. “You’re sure you don’t want me to hire a driver? I, I mean if you want to go out and visit Aunt Peggy during the week?” He told me he’d just be staying in town during the week.
The city is big. One of the friends he plans on visiting lives 3 bus transfers and an hour away. 10 years ago I wouldn’t have given it another thought. I would have said “Cool, whatever”. 5 years ago I might have checked the teansit rout out of courtesy, and maybe said “You sure?”
Da’s getting older. I think his hearing is going which makes his equilibrium off. I think of all the traffic, I think of all the obstacles on the sidewalks, I think about how sometimes the bus won’t stop if you aren’t exactly at the sign. I look up the rout so I can describe to him where to go and wait but I’m not even sure.
Which one of us is it that has changed? Mentally, I’m sure it’s me. He thinks nothing of these things, which I would NEVER voice, running through my head. It’s a fine line. He’s my father, not my friend or child. It was his town long before I checked and rechecked maps finally asking his recommendations how to get to and from work here. He has his hooks and his cane. He is blind with no hands, not helpless with no voice. There are too many ways I could insult him by voicing my worries. So I can’t say anything. Like the many times as a child I bit my tongue as I cleaned a cut or scrape because he fell on the rail road tracks, or told him his shirt was bloody and took the broken sunglasses away from his milk swirled eyes as he explained he walked into a door somebody left open, a sign that hadn’t been there before or a pole that always had.

I’ll check out the obstacles to the bus stop on the way home when I get off the bus. I can do that without adding insult to…
Well at least it might make me feel a little better.