Promoting the celebrity status of my mother, Marlene
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Repressed Memory
When I was in high school, I was a member of the concert band. During my sophomore year, the band boosters bought all the female members of concert band long, black skirts for the concert. All of the skirts were the same length: very long. When the band moms handed them out to us, they told us to take the skirts home to have our mothers hem them to the proper length.
I took my skirt home and told Marlene what the band moms said. She hung the skirt off the high kitchen cabinets and said she'd "take care of it".
It hung there for a week.
I started to get desperate. "Mom," I pleaded, "The concert is Sunday. Will you hem my skirt?"
I woke up on Sunday morning to find the skirt considerably shorter. It was not hemmed, though. You see, she started to hem it, but got frustrated, so she took out a pair of kitchen shears and just cut it down to size.
"The band moms are going to kill me!" I told her, as she made me try on my skirt in the kitchen. She wanted to see if it's short enough. I started to cry. "They're going to make us pay for the skirt," I cried.
"No," my mom said firmly. "We can't afford to pay for the skirt."
"Well, what are we going to do?" I sobbed.
"Just tell them that we already turned it in when they ask," she said simply.
At the end of the year, when one of the band mom's asked where my skirt was, I told her I already turned it in. She believed me.
I am very proud of my mother. She took her car for an oil change by herself. She went to the mechanic where my dad brings all the cars. At the garage, there are two old men who, as far as I can tell, are just mechanic groupies. Their main function is to hang at the garage. Maybe they ring up customers or make the coffee--I don't know. My father refers to one of the men as "Old Man" and the other, who smokes a cigar, as "Decrepit Old Man".
My mother decided to wait at the garage for the oil change, rather than have my brother drop her off home and have her come back again. As she waited, one of the old men sidled up to my mother and said, "Hey Sunshine, how are you doing?"
"Which old man was it?", I interrupted my mother. "Was it the regular Old Man or Decrepit Old Man?"
"How the hell should I know?", she asked, exhaling smoke from her cigarrette.
"Well, if he had a cigar, then he is 'Decrepit Old Man'," I told her. "Otherwise, he is regular Old Man."
"He had a cigar," she stated.
"Then he is decrepit!" I cried.
She then continued her story--
Decrepit Old Man sat next to my mother in the waiting room/office of the garage. "Wow, we don't get many good looking ladies like you around here," he said smoothly.
My mom looked at him. She thought he was joking around.
"I'm sure," she said.
"You are beautiful," he told her.
"Were you a salesman before you worked here?" she asked.
"I don't really work here," he told her.
"So you just hang out here?"
He ignored that question. "What makes you think that I was a salesman?"
"Because you are so smooth," Mom said.
"Well, Sunshine, I wasn't a salesman. I just know a pretty lady when I see one." He paused. "What are you doing tonight?"
My mother looked at him squarely. "No one has found me attractive in quite sometime. After all, I'm almost a senior citizen. Do you have cataracts?"
At that point, the mechanic told her the car was finished. She paid him, gathered her keys and left without another word to the Decrepit Old Man.
"I couldn't believe it," she said to me. "He really thought I was hot. He must be going blind or crazy."
Looking over my posts from the last few days, I realize I forgot to write about the toy that my mother gave Charlie for Valentine's Day.
When she came over to visit this past Sunday, she had a large, red bag. Marlene sat on the couch, drew Charlie close to her and pulled out a plush dog. The dog is just not one of your run-of-the-mill plush dogs, but if you press its stomach, it bellows the song "Puppy Love". Not only does it sing, but it "dances". Now, I use the term "dance" loosely here, as its "dance" is really the dog swinging its head around spastically and shaking.
When my mother first pressed the button and the dog started screaming and shaking, Charlie had a melt down.
After I calmed him down, she pressed the button again. Charlie again freaked out.
What is most humorous about the dog is that it is top-heavy. During its screaming and shaking fit, it tends to fall over. Then it looks like it is humping the air. My mother found this particularly funny. She laughed so hard, I thought she was going to wet herself (and the couch).
The interesting thing is that the part of the song "Puppy Love" that it sings includes the lyrics "Help me Help me Help me". When it gets to that part of the song, it's just pathetic.
It has been five days since my mother has gifted seizure dog to my son. Charlie has slowly gotten over his fear of the toy; he now watches it with the same expression one would watch a car crash.
What kind of grandmother would give this sick, sad toy to her grandson?
I ended up airing out Marlene today. We didn't go far--just to Wegmans. On the way home, Marlene said, "You know, Charlie's a good kid."
"Yeah, I know." I replied. "He's good at the store."
"You should have another one. I mean, if it doesn't have eczema or colic or stuff," said my mom.
"I don't know."
Marlene was quiet for a few moments. "You know," she said, looking out the car window, "That's why your great-grandmother started having sex."
I was confused. "Because Charlie has eczema? Nana's been dead for five years..."
"No," my mother replied. She was silent.
"Did Nana have eczema then?" I asked. "And why would she not have sex then?"
"No," Marlene said. She paused for a moment. "Your grandmother, Rita, had eczema so bad that there are no baby pictures of her. Then Uncle Bud started to get it. Papa [my great-grandfather] had a lot of money and he tried everything, but swore by homeopathic remedy. They claimed that if you put cow poop on the eczema, it would clear up. So they put cow poop on Rita and Bud, and, I don't know if it was just time for the eczema to clear up or what, but it did."
It took me a minute to digest this. "I really don't want to cover my child with cow crap," I said. "Anyway, what does this have to do with Nana not having sex?"
"Well," Marlene continued, "It was so heart-breaking for her to have a child with eczema that she didn't want anymore, so she stopped having sex with Papa and then they moved into separate bedrooms and stopped."
"So that's why Papa had a mistress!" I said.
"Yeah, but Nana just thought she was a woman he was helping out. And then she left the house to him when she died. And Rita was mortified that her father was leading a parallel universe."
I thought for a moment. "But there was birth control back then."
My mother nodded her head sagely, "But Nana was a good Catholic woman. She wouldn't have used it."
According to my mother, she was sleeping around 6 a.m. on a Friday morning about two weeks ago. She was woken up by the psyhco dog, who went beserk and started barking. My mother came downstairs. The dog was sniffing under the kitchen door (that leads to the back door) and barking furiously. She opened the kitchen door a crack and saw the back door was open. My mother went back upstairs to wake up my brother, Peter. She wanted him to go into the basement to check out what was happening.
As Peter prepared himself to go into the basement to confront a burglar, my mother pleaded with him to take a weapon. She suggested a kitchen knife or the baseball bat that was in the front hallway. Were any of those weapons vicious enough for Peter?
No.
He took her Swiffer. Not even the Swiffer Wet Mop that might have a bit of heft if you pounded the hell out of someone, but the Swiffer dust mop, which is a hollow aluminum stick with an electrostatic rag attached at one end.
This burglar would be shakin' in his boots, all right.
Peter descended the stairs with CoCo in tow. Coco stopped on the third stair and bounded back up to the kitchen. So, Peter bravely went on his way alone, only to find...
nothing.
My mother insisted he check the fruit cellar after making a full sweep (no pun intended) of the basement. He pointed out that no one could or would hide in their because of all the crap stored in it.
I talked to Marlene earlier this week. She talked to her neighbor, Mary, who said that someone was probably casing my mom's house. My mother thinks that the burglar got as far as the back door, heard the dog and took off.
After all, what hardened criminal would be able to match wits and physical prowess with a man holding a Swiffer?
My mother came over yesterday to visit with Charlie. Our living room was littered with toys and board books. As my mother sat on the couch, she picked up a Baby Einstein book about colors.
"This is SO stupid," she remarked flipping the pages. "It says, 'Gustav Klimt'. And then you flip the page and it says 'green'. Now what kid is going to know that?"
"I think it's just trying to teach colors, Mom," I said.
"No." She was irritated. "It doesn't even have a plot!"
"Well, what do you expect? It's to teach colors."
She threw the Baby Einstein book into the laundry basket where we store Charlie's toys. She fished out another book and flipped through it quickly.
"Circus McGurkus?" she remarked, looking at the book. "What kind of stupid book is this?"
"It's Dr. Seuss," I said.
"Well, it's got a stupid plot."
"Mom, they're books for babies. They are not War and Peace. They don't have complicated plots or even plots at all. It's supposed to be about concepts."
She gave me her disguted look and then picked up another book. This one is a board book about Spiderman.
"That one has plot," I told her.
"This is no good. It will set the kid up to have unrealistic expectations," she said, giving me her disgusted face. "Look at this!" She held up the book and pointed a picture of Spiderman hanging upside down from a tree by using his web. "Your kid's gonna grow up thinking her can do this and he won't be able to-"
"Who's to say he won't be able to?" said my husband.
"I'm just saying that you're setting up unrealistic expectations," my mom said emphatically.
