Just this year, my mom has turned into an old lady. That, or just this year I’ve started to notice just how old lady like she is. When you go through piles and piles of forty years worth of someone else’s stuff, you start to realize a few things about them. We rented a dumpster to clean out her old house and I swear, every time I tried to throw something away she said, “Now, someone might want that.” Or “Well, we could use that.” She insisted on keeping every single thing. “I might use that at Christmas,” she said about her thirty year old electric knife that’s missing the cord. “Your uncle so and so gave that to me.” I can’t tell you how many fake flowers she has in her house. They are everywhere, collecting dust, in even more hideous looking vases. She proudly displays them in any free space, in any given corner of the house. Every piece of the clothing that was left behind in her old house smells like fried food, Ben-Gay or pee, since she just recently started having bladder control issues.
I don’t mean to gross you out. I’m trying to get you to understand. I mean, don’t get me wrong, she’s always been old. She had me when she was forty so I’ve never really seen her when she was young and hip, which my siblings swear to me that she was at some point in her life. Now you hip forty year olds who are having children don’t be offended. My mom was never hip and by no means attempted to be so. She is fun without trying to be, funny without trying to be, but one thing she is definitely not is cool. She’s never been cool. She always seemed so closed off to anything having to do with my generation. She never liked any of my music and all of the lyrics she could make out offended her puritan-like sensibilities. Her favorite thing to do was to pick out some horrific ensemble from the thrift store or a garage sale and say “All the kids are wearing these!” You know, before bellbottoms and polyester shirts came back in style. No, by the time I was born my parents were tired after having three children and then being surprised by a fourth. They were worn out. They were poor. My mom didn’t take me to the park much. She took me to church. She had drawers full of buttons. She watched TBN and Lawrence Welk. All classic old person stuff here, people. She loved and still loves to pick through junk. It’s junk that she will never let go of, as much as I try in vain to convince her that, mom, you can only have so many fake flowers and so many buttons before your house starts to look like the inside of a Goodwill. It took only a few days for her new house to go from the cute, modern-mixed-with-classical décor I had bought for her, to something that looked like a fake-flower-tornado hit it. My sister laughed about it, saying it reminded her of the scene in The Waterboy where Bobby’s mama is laid up in the hospital one night and then the next night when we see her she is surrounded by all of the chotchkies from her trailer, brought in to her hospital room by her patient and dutiful, albeit slow, son.
In spite of all of that, my mom never seemed like an old lady when I was growing up. She just seemed extremely out of touch. She’s sort of an innocent, really, or she is really good at acting like one. She will turn off a movie if it has just one curse word in it. She’ll say, “I don’t like that.” To hear an offensive word come out of any her kids’ mouths gives her a near heart attack. Remember, she’s the same woman who never said the “v” word, and the same one who hated using the “f” word. Not that “f” word. The other one. Okay, I’ll spell it. F-a-r-t. I still can’t say it. I’m thirty two years old and when I pass gas I call it a toot. Thanks again, mom. If the woman says anything offensive or crude it is by sheer accident. We have an uncle on my dad’s side named Dick, and she saw a guy at church who looked just like him, except the guy was about seven feet tall. She came home that night and told my siblings and myself that she saw a guy who looked like a seven foot Dick. She said, “He did! He looked like a seven foot Dick!” To this day I’m not quite sure if she realizes why we fell off of our chairs with laughter.
Now I’m sorry if I’ve offended you with that story. I told that story once when I was out with some friends and I fear it may have been a little too off color for them. But it’s one of the funniest things my saintly, naïve, pure as the driven snow mother has ever said. You’d laugh too if you were raised by her.
My realization that my mom is considered to be among the elderly came later that afternoon, after helping her “throw away” stuff, when she wanted to take us out to lunch and she picked, of course, Hometown Buffet. I have issues with buffets. They are unsanitary. There are always morbidly obese people who stay for four hours sitting in the corner and it makes me feel so bad for them. And usually the food is terrible, as is the case at Hometown Buffet. It’s just terrible. A friend of mine says about buffets, you wouldn’t pay ten dollars for one plate of terrible food, why pay ten dollars for ten plates of terrible food? He has a point. I have a few rules of my own for eating at any buffet. Stick with the starches, stay away from fish (especially at Chinese buffets). Don’t even look at the ice cream machine next to the desserts because God knows when the last time that thing was cleaned. Say it with me, botulism. I sat down with my plate of biscuits and mac n’ cheese, looked around, and noticed a funny smell at the table next to me. Buffets are so sad. Hometown Buffet is like the nursing home cafeteria where my grandma stayed. My son brightens everyone’s day and is oblivious to all the sadness, but I just can’t eat at those places. They zap the appetite, and life, right out of me.
I looked across the table at my mom, who was on her second plate of “good” salad. It occurred to me, she’s old. She loves this place. It doesn’t bother her that we are surrounded by white hair because even though she dyes her hair blonde, she’s one of them. I said, “Mom, why did you want to come here to eat?” “Oh, I like their salad,” she said, as if she wasn’t aware that all of the ingredients on the salad bar were readily available, fresher, and weren’t handled by one hundred people at the nearest grocery store. My mom is the queen of denial. My brother joked with her, “She’s an old lady, that’s why.” She insisted, “I am not!” We laughed, but then I looked around. Yes, sorry mom, but you’re officially old. Seventy two years is only considered young in parts of Japan
Most people are sad when the realization hits them that their parents are old. It happens to some overnight because of sickness or an accident. Others like me know it’s kind of always been there, you just realize it so much more now that you’re a bit older yourself. It’s not sad to me. It’s kind of a relief. It justifies some of her behavior quite rightly. She can’t hear because she’s old. I have to repeat everything three times because she’s old. She drives like a maniac because she’s freaking old. It explains so much. She wants to keep all of her things and I have to let that go. Because she’s old. She’s like any other person who has experienced change in their lives. She’s a little bit out of her element, a little bit scared. I have to take care of her, because I’m not old. Not yet anyway. I have to be her patient and dutiful Bobby Boucher (pronounced Boo-Shay) and surround her in things with which she is familiar so she feels safe. She loves eating at the old person’s buffet so, well, I can eat there too. She wants a room full of fake flowers then I suppose I just have to give up and let her have one, since it doesn’t hurt anyone. I hope that when I’m old my son tries to be as patient with me as he can. I hope when I’m singing in the car “Bust a Move,” which will be so ancient by then, that he’ll just roll his eyes and smile. I hope he’ll bring his son with us to the buffet where I’ll noticeably pee my pants but load up on the “good” salad anyway. God give me patience with my mama. I will turn into her someday. We all will.
But if she starts a doll collection like my grandmother’s, oh heck no. That’s where I draw the line.
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