Friday, May 15, 2015

Again, from 2013 --
it begins without much of a beginning, but I figure it's my blog, I'll skip on ceremony if I wanna (so yes, this was my first one.  Kinda hate that they don't keep the first one first, then go on from there, but -- to reverse too complicated for IT idiote comme moi-meme!)


     'If you can put a man on the moon!’ my mom and I intoned the other day, she 87, me just 51 (neither of us having any idea what we were talking about just then, only it wasn't about pantyhose), sitting in the sunny sunny garden of the place in Oakland I get to call home (or minor estate, as I like to think of it – Big House, Cottage, Great Yard, Patio, Fire Pit & then me, in the Enchanted Library – I mean, come on!  I am not wrong!)
         Did not have a camera so I just had to memorize her, my mother:       Sitting in a very sturdy chair (approvingly, ‘this chair is solid!’) right next to a huge accidental bloom of daisies, all of them thrusting straight toward the blue blue sky and the hot yellow sun, everything going up up up, all white-white and yellow-yellow and so so so happy!!  Daisies are nature's cheerleaders (no wonder they call 'em Daisy Dukes!)  And down the street at least five trees in full bloom, every leaf that virgin spring green, all of it fluttering in the sun, in the breeze, the whole thing like a candle shivering for its own beauty and delight …!
         [meanwhile, back in the future…]
         I'd spent a crazed day with an 87-year-old 98% blind Icelandic gnome with white hair that was cut very severely two years ago (we have since had to endure watching my mother comb her hair over, and over, and over).  And over, and over, and over – & eventually my mother, who knows/abhors every TV cliché, had to endure our mutation of one as we chorused, MAMA, PUT THE COMB DOWN.  At which point she might politely suggest you might want to be getting on your way.
         But, earlier:
         We staggered from McCalou’s shoe shop -- lots of generic stuff:  a TON of flip-flops, every style! & lotsa ugly patent-leather flats with big square bows ‘n shit.  Sneakers.  A shit-ton of sneakers.
         And yet!  We came up triumphant, w/ adorable black Chinese slipper-style shoes and some really chic dark green leather with green raffia laces that are the envy of all (who can still see) at her Assisted Facility home.
         She also needed new makeup (she's a Clinique girl, loyal to the death), a nightgown, some underwear & some comfortable pants, so I tell her I'll pick her up and we'll go to the McCalou's department store just up the (very steep) hill -- it's small, but has everything, and is in classy Montclair.
         Herding her into McCalou’s proper she stops and then starts singing along with the audio system – Frank Sinatra, Body and Soul (‘oh, I loved this one!’)  And she’s singing it as we wend our way toward some very well hidden elevator, & I realize people around me are smiling, and so am I, because I’m thinking my mom has still got her eye on the prize.
         We were lifted up to second story and we bought Clinique foundation and that moisturizer that comes in yellow and a new bottle of its parfum and some lipsticks, then veered over to lingerie for a DKNY nightgown (plus the silkiest of her pj pants, slate grey -- I got a pair, too, and wear them everywhere!) & a button-down shirt,  white w/darts that accentuate the figure, plus 2 prs underwear (which later turned out to be a mistake, but hell -- for the most part it was jackpot!)
      And then we were out of there (my mother listening to Rod Stewart this time, saying, ‘there’s something about that man I just love!  He just seems – happy’) ~ & she’s still humming along.
         Having realized at the exact moment that we were both suddenly ‘a favorite of vodka’ (and since ‘the estate, minor’ was directly – and I mean right off 35th Ave – on my way home from McC’s to her place) we came here & exulted in the day and the fact we had the place to ourselves – so I made my mother a light vodka and saw her relax in the late afternoon California sun, sit back in her Raybans and her hot tomato-red thin shirt (underneath which -- she will hate me for saying this -- she was wearing black drawstring pants whose drawstring she had forgotten at home).  
     She had only realized this earlier, when we were walking from parking lot to store, and  because this is my mother, she couldn’t stop laughing.  She kept grabbing at her waist and saying, oops!  Then staggering around with her cane, uncontrollably, skeetering sideways down that steep sidewalk, while I ran to catch her.   
     There is a spirit there that is indomitable:  we call it THOR.
     And truth remains that, exhausted as we both were after our four-hour ordeal, we had a blast.