"Oh my fucking God she put a meganormous picture of a fucking baloney sandwich on her blog! And it's on white bread too!! I will *never* be able to be seen in public with her again!!!"
- or some such thing.
(Cute sammie, no?)
**********
Getting To Know My Mother 101 -
This May she will be 88 years old.
Her mind is sharper than mine.
Forget that.
Her mind is sharper than all of ours put together.
She is a MASTER manipulator.
She does have a heart of gold though and is more than generous when it comes to helping us all out of jams.
(Thought I'd toss something nice in there.)
If she has no aches, pains and life threatening illnesses to complain about, she'll invent things. An acquaintance of ours is dying of bone cancer, brought on by AIDS.
"I think I have what Freddie has ..."
"Um. I think *maybe* not Ma ..."
She will give you a list of groceries to buy her.
Most of the time, she'll "forget" one item, thus making sure you'll come back within a day or two with said forgotten item.
If you did manage to get everything she needs, she'll thank you by calling someone in the family and letting them know what a fuck up you are when it comes to getting her groceries.
"I told her I wanted three large tomatoes. She got me three medium sized tomatoes instead!"
My brothers - toss in a Southern "bless their hearts" in there - have successfully managed to remove her from their lives unless absolutely necessary.
Tara is safely tucked away in Germany.
That leaves me.
She calls me no less than five times a day.
One minute to her us equals 10 to us.
She can't figure out why I only talk to her for 3 minutes.
"Ma .... we've been on the phone for half an hour."
"No. It's only been three minutes ..."
And she goes on. Mother of God, can that woman jump from one subject to the next. I thought I had perfected the art of saying "uh huh" every five minutes until she got wise to the fact that I wasn't listening and started testing me.
"Why did I phone you again?"
"Ahhh .... um .... hmm ...."
Not the best response but probably much better than "Did you know there are literally thousands of pictures of balogna sandwiches on the web? I'm looking through them right now. You should see them all!"
And then every once in awhile your ear will catch something that might be important.
"Tara is staying in Germany forever."
"She's what? No she isn't. Says who? Where did you hear this??"
"She's taking German lessons."
"So what's that got to do with anything?"
"If she's taking German lessons it means she's staying forever."
"Oh Ma. She's only taking lessons so that she can walk away after two years knowing how to say more than "can I please have a pack of cigarettes" in German."
"No. She's German now."
Meine tochter ist jetzt Deutsch
Hm. I wonder how you say baloney sandwich in German ....
1 comment:
Wurtz Sandwich. Tell Babcia to keep her premonitions to herself! I'm still blaming her for York. Great entry Mom!
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