I was about 4 when I started walking with my father to the Red & White grocery store on the other side of the block from our house in Albemarle. One day, he broke from our usual path along the street and cut through the grass beside the store.

"I'm taking a shortcut," he said, seeing my reluctance to deviate from our standard route.

"What's a shortcut?" I asked.

"It's a faster way to get from here to there," daddy said.

That was it for me. From that moment on, my walks to the Red & White were that much shorter.

There must have been thousands of childhood moments like that with my father as he gave me little pieces of knowledge needed for navigating this life: removing the red ring from a slice of bologna; teaching a dog to sit and shake hands; reaching a necktie around me at the mirror until I had mastered the Windsor knot; using old neckties to make a tail for a kite.

A few of the actual moments — like the shortcut — have stayed with me. But for the most part, the moment is gone as soon as the lesson moves in — like putting one foot in front of the other.

During a recent visit with my parents in Tennessee, I took dad to breakfast. For as long as I can remember, Wiley Rutledge has preferred having his breakfast in public. He always forms warm acquaintances with the restaurant staff and fellow patrons, a trait that served him well in his work as a Baptist preacher.

Dad's preferred morning routine for the past few years has involved McDonald's. The workers at my parents' local McDonald's often have mom and dad's breakfast order ready for them before they walk in the door.

But on this day it was too late to order from the breakfast menu, so we went to the IHOP across town.

After I ordered our food, dad started telling me again about spotting my mother on a volleyball court at Carson-Newman College some 53 years ago; how cute she was in her bluejeans and sweat shirt; and how he knew he would marry her before he even knew her name.

When our breakfast came, the waitress brought a bottle of ketchup for our hash browns.

"What's that?" dad asked, pointing to the bottle.

"It's ketchup," I said.

"What do you do with it?" he asked.

"Well, some people like it on their hash browns," I explained. "That's why she left it for us."

I've never known dad to use ketchup on anything except hamburgers, but I put some on a bite of hash browns for him to try.

"It's OK," he said, "but I don't have to have it."

A year ago — maybe even six months ago — dad would have recognized a bottle of ketchup. As he enters the latter stages of Alzheimer's disease, the memory gaps — the disconnection from ketchup and other bits of common knowledge — are widening.

Yet, his core character and personality are not lost. That morning at the IHOP, for instance, dad lagged behind as the hostess led us to our booth.

He was doing what he has always done in those places — putting smiles on the faces of total strangers with just a few playful words.

And he can still relate various stories that chronicle most of his life. The words and phrases are increasingly broken, but there's usually someone to fill in the gaps.

The primary someone is my mother, Marjorie Walters Rutledge — retired schoolteacher and one-time college volleyball player.

My mother took it seriously when she said the words "in sickness and in health." She is his caregiver, his interpreter, his lifeline, and also the bearer of his frustration and occasional rage.

"I'm going to keep him right here with me," Mom insists when the topic of preparing for institutional care is raised.

She knows that taking care of him at home will eventually become too difficult, but considering other options is especially hard while there is still such capacity for joy in her husband's life.

More than 5 million people in the United States have Alzheimer's, according to the Alzheimer's Association. Without a cure, that number is expected to more than double by midcentury, when one in 85 people worldwide — at the current rate — will have the disease.

The prospect of 106 million people with Alzheimer's by 2050 has drug companies and researchers working overtime to arrive at a cure or more effective treatments.

Meanwhile, millions more of us are praying — through our own tears of frustration and occasional rage — for a faster way to get from here to there.

I have a snapshot of my dad and me sitting on a Honda 350 motorcycle with two suitcases strapped on, ready to roar away from Johnson City, Tenn., bound for Fort Lauderdale, Fla. He was 43, I was 13, and there was not a man in the world stronger or wiser or cooler than my dad.

For several years during the 1970s, dad traveled by motorcycle to the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. He was a bit of a rebel among Baptist preachers.

Last week, my mother sent me that snapshot and several others from that long-ago motorcycle trip. I can look at those pictures and almost smell the heat rising off that old 350.

It was not a comfortable ride. The seat was hard, for one thing, but the intense vibration mercifully left your rear end without feeling after about 50 miles.

To make matters worse, it started raining before we had even made it over the mountains and didn't stop until just before we rolled into Fort Lauderdale. But who cares? This was the ride of a lifetime.

Dad was talking about that trip again the other day, my sister, Sue Ellen, told me. "He was telling us that T-bone-steak story," she said.

We were staying at a Howard Johnson somewhere along the journey home. Dad sent me down to the restaurant and said he'd be along in a few minutes.

When he walked in to find me halfway into one of the most expensive meals on the menu, he laughed out loud.

When that trip came along, I was having a hard time with that whole period known as adolescence. A certain distance had developed between my father and me that had not been there before.

I didn't realize it at the time, but that's why he took me along for that glorious ride. It was exactly the bonding experience we both needed.

Now, it's my dad who's having a hard time. The ravages of age have formed a different kind of distance between us.

It's been 32 years to the month since we made that amazing ride to Florida and back. If I thought it would help, I'd put my dad and two suitcases on the back of a motorcycle.

And we'd roar away from Johnson City, Tenn., all over again.

Contact Mark Rutledge at mrutledge@coxnc.com or 329-9575.