My Mom

Everyone has a mom, more or less. (I'm looking at you, Tom Cruise.) My mom is no more or less crazy than anyone else's. Only crazier.

Today we had dinner at the H-----. "Her treat," as she reminded me several times. My mom is turning 71 in October, and she looks remarkably youthful. Her knee is bad, and she can barely move her right leg, and she is exhausted all the time, and she has diabetes, and she is clinically depressed, and has abandonment issues and possible borderline personality disorder, and high blood pressure and dizzy spells and is overweight, and perhaps very near death, but damnit if she doesn't look at least ten years younger.

My mom is an allegory for contemporary society. If you go in for that sort of thing.

She is currently working sixty hours a week going to the house of an elderly lady named Mimi, who is 88, very wealthy and completely kookaburra (as they say on Austrian sitcoms). Mimi often says she is "screwed." "I'm screwed," she'll say. "I'm screwy," she'll say. Mom tells me this many times throughout our dinner. "Mimi said I'm screwed about a hundred times yesterday." Mom has told me this same story for the last year that she has taken care of Mimi, at least a hundred times times a hundred. She is sad because she loves Mimi and wants to help her, but there is not much that she can do, since Mimi is (wait for it) screwed. Mimi is getting worse and worse. "She says I'm screwed about every other second," Mom says. "She hasn't a clue, the poor soul. On Monday she wiped her feces on the hand towel in the bathroom. I keep telling her to stop digging around in there when she goes. She gets it all over her fingers. I mean, does she really want me to stand over her when she goes to the bathroom?" Mom makes ten dollars an hour. "You know what she said? She said she was screwy."

Henry James wrote a longish story called "Turn of the Screw."

That morning Mom had bought herself a new color Nook. She wanted me to show her how to play Angry Birds on it. I stared at her Nook like a dog shown a card trick. Finally I figured out how a person plays Angry Birds, something that was very hip about three months ago. Now Mom can listen to Mimi say how screwed she is while she shoots birds at frogs or so is my understanding. Another comment on society here, I suppose. (Jesus, I hate commentaries on society. And Jesus.)

Eventually we descended into our usual gut-knottening practice of arguing about family issues. My youngest brother has a nine-year-old daughter. For the final week of summer, he is going to take her up to my father's house in H---- (not the Mexican restaurant, but with nearly as much hired help). My father is wealthy and has a big house. My mom hates my father with the heat of a thousand suns and the power of a million wind farms (1). She is a green hater. My mom is offended that my brother is taking his daughter up to our dad's. Four family members in one short sentence! Whoo!

"It's about the money," Mom said. "It's always about the money."

"She likes going up there, Mom," I said, playing my accustomed vaudeville role with a heavy sense of ennui and taco meat. "There's a lake for her to swim in. It'll be fun for her."

"Always excuses. You always excuse your father. You always have to be so kind and understanding," Mom sneered. "When is anyone going to stand up for me? Just once?"

"What would Jesus do, Mom?" I said, casting my eyes toward heaven.

"Yes, yes, that's exactly what he would do!"

"Uh, which, the kindness part, or the standing up?"

"Jesus stood up for people. He stood up for his disciples!"

"Really? What part of the Bible is that scene?" I asked, well aware that neither of us knew what we were talking about.

"I just don't understand why your father always gets a free pass. Everyone always just kowtows to him."

"But what about [my other brother] who refuses to talk to him?"

"I mean you and C---."

"So do you want us to cut Dad out and refuse to talk to him like [my other brother]?"

"I just want you to stand up for me. For once."

"Like Jesus?"

Around and around it went. Much of the time I spent contemplating the sunlight on Mom's iced tea (she always orders a tremendo-vat of iced tea wherever we go.) It gave me a sense of peace. At last, the bell rang and  the check came. Mom looked at it.

"Is it my turn to pay, or yours?"

We're all screwed.

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(1) Mom and Dad divorced forty years ago.