momfoolery

others and carefully Some days are tough to write about. 

I aspire to be the person who can risk every type of fallout in the name of telling the truth. 

But I ain’t there yet. Not even close; not down the street, not in the same borough or shire. The thought of those mean comments directed at my soft underbelly are too threatening right now, as I try my best to avoid shame and consequences, no matter how much I might deserve them. Cause the only way I can do what I need to do right now is to blur my vision, ignore any details I can, and march on.

So tonight, I’m gonna give let it slide, and not tell the truth exactly (but not tell a lie either), and just post a throwback post I wrote about a year ago, because it’s just easier-the edges having been softened by the passage of time. Tragedy plus time equals comedy, remember. In that spirit, maybe, I’ll eventually see an angle that allows me to be comfortable writing about today. In the meantime, here’s this. 

Mom hard, but never boring

Called her highness today and I had a reason to talk to her beyond the nuts and bolts stuff that keeps her alive. Making sure that she can still answer the phone is a huge plus, because it means that she is conscious and able to move around, so when she answers I’m ahead of the game already. 

Today, I thought it might be nice to contact her about something that didn’t involve me bossing her around. So I called to tell her that I had the night before finished a book about longevity. My husband had ordered it and I was curious so I sat up to read it. I wasn’t particularly impressed – it stressed things that pretty much everybody knows: people who outlive everybody’s expectations tend to eat vegetables, exercise mildly but regularly, and have strong social connections. 

My mom is an outlier here. She hates other people, always has. She has never smoked or drank in any real sense of the word – there was one incident in college, of which she seems rather proud, when the group of boys that she hung out with (they called themselves the Five Musketeers) were all hanging around and cutting up (I think that’s what they called it back then) and the result was that the next day when they all arrived in class, on the chalkboard was written, “Schultz smokes cigars!” Schultz of course being my mom’s last name at the time. 

So today I thought it would be hilarious to remind her that since she has just turned 89, she could be fodder for those folks who want to interview her and find out the secret method she has used to live this long.  I mean, they ask these people how they managed to spend more than one hundred years on this planet, but really, who cares what they say? In the book I read, a number of the people they interviewed said that they had lives so long because they had greeted many people every day by saying hello with a smile. I’m calling bs. 

Of course, I believe that these people had smiled and greeted, but unless I see a controlled, double blind test from a reputable university that shows that this activity will extend your life, I ain’t buying it. 

But, my daughter and I have a standing joke about a post she showed me, where a guy said that if he were ever fortunate to live long enough to have an interviewer ask how he had managed this, he would make up whatever crazy crap was at the tip of his tongue. His example was, “I ate a pinecone every day.” Years later, my girl and I still have this thing that we go into when we see a pinecone lying on the ground. So when I read that book, I saw my chance, and I jumped at it.

I called my mom with the intention of getting our story’s straight about what had led to her long life. It could be anything and we could make it up as we went along, although my oldest thought that we could get some kickback if we cued her to say that everything she has accomplished is due to a steady diet of Dr. Pepper. And she is, despite the fact that she has spent the largest portion of her life living in southern california, a southern lady, so yes, from the gallons of diet doctors I’ve seen her consumes throughout the years, I don’t think she could have been proven wrong.

But she threw me a curve, and started in like this, “So I was just sitting here thinking before you called about how stupid and lazy all women are.” 

Ok.

She has some standing to run her mouth like this since she bootstrapped her way into being a flaming bitch by being of the few women scientists in her graduating class. And by few, I mean three. But she has always thought it was cute to belittle me in that way, to make sure that I knew that men are smarter and better and that’s why she always wanted to hang around with them. I’ve heard all that shit before, but I didn’t know where she was going this time. 

I have long thick hair, that I used to wear tied back all the time or else it would poof up to the point that it would cover my face if allowed. But then I chopped it to shoulder length and then, after all that hair weight was relieved, I became somebody who has curly hair. Mom’s response was to touch it and fiddle with it when she say me, saying, “Goodness look, how kinky your hair is getting.” 

Yeah, there is probably some racist stuff going on here, and then I finally asked her about it, since she has spend her entire life hating her curly hair. She said, “I guess I was trying to make you feel what I felt when people talked about my hair like that.” 

Ok, fine. But why? Why does saying a bitchy thing like that make you feel better? 

And here’s another thing I don’t know about her. 

After she said that line about how stupid and lazy women are, I stopped wanting to talk to her about any of that light funny stuff I’d just called her about. I mean, fuck her, it was on. So I forced her to get up and take her pills, because otherwise this stupid lazy female was gonna drive over there and then she would have some regrets. So after some more arguments she took the pills, and then I pulled myself together enough that I could stop feeling that stupid sting that only your parent hurting you can bring, even after so long, and even after the tables have been turned, and I tried to get her to eat something. 

There was a pre-made salad in her fridge; she just had to mix up the ingredients and so I talked her through it. At one point, she said, “ Ichiban Tomadashi.” And then, as I waited on hold, I could hear her singing, “Ichiban Tomadashi.” I figured it was a phrase she was reading off a soy sauce packets, one of the ones she keeps lying with the ketchup and all the organizes by size and color. But no. 

She explained that his was something one of her former co-workers had said to her very often. She is prone to making up stories, but they are usually rooted in a bit of truth. This time, I thought that she was probably reading off a soy sauce packet and then giving it a backstory. But after I hung up, still in a rage, I looked it up. It means good friend. 

So that was probably a true story. The last time she worked closely with other chemists was before she was married, so at least sixty years ago. And all of a sudden that bubbled to the surface. 

And if you know me, you know that I love more than anything trying to figure out the little weird things that exist in the world. Like why is this cement worn in this way. Or why did somebody build this god awful apartment building that looks like some backwater soviet dive, but that still has this random decorative star formation on one corner for no apparent reason. I talk about this kind of thing ad nauseam, and yes, I can provide confirmation that most of my nearest and dearest find me nauseating when I start rambling on like this. 

And then there she is singing that ichiban tomadashi song, as she continues in her role as an example of that crazy minutia that I find fascinating. Touche, Mom. Touche.