My mother spent the day Sunday in the Emergency Room so I kind of feel bad for poking fun at her, but I sorta can’t help it. Then she says something off cue while I am Googling talking to her on the phone, “Honey maybe that’s all life is. Doing the research.”
That woman, my mother, breathes life in me with the preservation of the Rod Stewart song Forever Young every day of my life.
****** ******* ****
Jersey
Bundled in a winter coat with the hood tightly pulled over her head she plucked her hand in the pocket and decided to put an end to it. The woman next to her continued to drone on, she had enough. Her fingers scrolled through the phone in a determined fashion to make the woman stop obsessing over details. She landed on my name and hit send as though she was getting on a plane escaping the conversation for one less cumbersome.
Texas
I rolled over the usual five minutes before the alarm went off staring at the ceiling when a buzzing noise emenated from the floor. My sister was giving me a 6:00 am wake up call on her walk to Starbucks with our Mother.
C: You awake?
J: Yes
C: Tsssss. Yeah right, I woke you up, admit it.
I pulled the covers over my head and crawled back inside the cocoon bending my legs into the fetal position
J: No, no. I’ve been awake for a whole ten minutes.
C: Yeah, and you’re getting a boob job.
We both laughed at the sarcasm of her statements.
C: Mom’s stressing. She thinks you’re going to be upset because she didn’t go all out this year and make the house look like the North Pole.
J: She’s worried what I think? Because the place won’t be perfect for ME?
C: Yeah. Tell her.
She hands the phone to our Very Holy Mother who has a way of drooling Hello with a smile.
VHM: Hellluoo.
J: You’re not going all out for Christmas? Mother, you’re really setting a bad example.
Laughing she hands the phone back to my sister.
C: And she bought you more mace.
Maybe it worked back in the days of gun slingers doing the ten step waltz and when lunacy was authorized as danger, but mace is a rotten protection weapon for present-day. This world of women trying to protect themselves, and behave like human beings wearing broken brass knuckles acting more like mental cases is down right asinine. I’m putting my shit kicking boots on to complete the last details before I leave and going to my boxing class tomorrow hoping she knows, in the midst of her research, all those lessons hit home. I know it’s less about the decorations and more about the company.
I can’t wait to leave 65 degree weather and head into a 20 or 30 something degree that feels like a warm 85. Tomorrow night is for a gathering of the closest friends - the one’s that have become a branch of the family we never knew we needed till we realized there also the one’s we can’t live without.
