On Friday night, Mom was just leaving the dining room as I came strolling down the hall from the back door, dripping from a strangely balmy rainstorm.I slowed down and matched my pace to hers. “How was dinner tonight?” I asked.
“Well, it's over with,” she replied, leaning heavily on her walker, eyes on the floor.
“Ha. That's funny,” I said. “Was that a joke? That was a joke!”
I couldn't see her face. My view was of her hunched shoulders. I admired her red fleece top, very festive.
I made a mental note to remember her joke so I could report it to you. She often says funny things, but I don't remember them. I enjoy her jokes in the moment, receiving them as they occur. Sorry you miss most of the good stuff. Her jokes and observations evaporate from my brain almost as fast as I suspect they evaporate from hers. I can't tell if I'm getting early dementia or my brain's memory failures are a sympathetic response to help me feel compassion for a woman I spent most of my life denigrating, avoiding, disparaging, or sucking up to.
The holiday season is barreling at us full speed, propelled by anger and fear. Fear that we'll miss out, that it won't be good enough, we won't get it all done, we won't get what we want. Anger that other people refuse to bend to our will (get out of our way, give us more love, stop believing stupid things). Anger that time and space are oblivious to our desperate need to find the right something for someone who could not care less.
Some years back, my family abandoned giving gifts to everyone in the family (all six of us, plus my one brother-in-law and my one niece), resorting instead to choosing "Secret Santas." That went over so well we eventually evolved to avoiding giving gifts altogether. After Dad died, there seemed to be little point.
The relief at opting out of the season of consumption overtakes me when I perform my weekly hunting and gathering chores (Winco). I feel no mania. When I'm at Mom's, watching TV with her, we remark on the proliferation of holiday commercials exhorting us to buy stuff, from perfume to trucks to burgers. No product is exempt from the season of giving. We marvel at the ploys marketers use to persuade us our lives will be perfect if we just buy that thing. Trucks barreling through snow (ugh, yech, who would want to do that?). Slim-limbed women in golden evening gowns soaking together in a giant Roman bath (like, what?). As the anti-Christ of marketing, I am chagrined to realize that the marketers' ploys have succeeded, at least with me—alas, I can remember the brands they were advertising. Curse you, marketing machine!
Here we are at the end of a year even more bizarre than the last. My friends have stopped watching the news, opting instead for deep dives into Netflix, where they settle among empty pizza boxes like traumatized goldfish sinking into crusty sediment. I don't have Netflix or pizza. I find relief reading library books in the bath.
Back in her room, she settled into the black hole of her couch and pulled her blanket over her. I turned on the TV. Friday night television leaves us bereft, now that MeTV has opted for College Football at 6:30 pm. No Flintstones, no Stooges, it's a real entertainment wasteland. It's either HGTV or golf.
“No more golf!” Mom said firmly.
Desperate, I switched to the Smithsonian channel, which was showing a program about World War II. We watched as Allied bombers blew up some buildings.
“I don't think I should watch this, do you?”
Our last resort is to watch the young man we have nicknamed Dimples, the tattooed host of the lottery dream home show on HGTV.
“Okay, I guess we are stuck with Dimples,” I said.
“Who?”
Her eyes were at half-mast. I snapped a photo of her coffee table with her in the background zoned out on the couch. On her table in the foreground of the photo, in this order: tissue box, fake flickering candle, Christmas stick (two ornaments on a bit of pine tree I found in the street, stuck in a bud vase), a bushy red poinsettia plant ordered by my sister from France and sent from California the day before, and a foot-tall dark green crocheted Christmas tree strung with tiny objects that look like they belong on a charm bracelet. In the background, my mother dozing in a red fleece top with her mouth open. If that doesn't say happy holidays, nothing will.
On Sunday night, M.A.S.H. will return and the world will align once again on its proper axis. It's winter solstice. We can put up with a few more days of these obnoxious commercials as we do our best to ignore this stupid cold season.
