Chapter 23: All about my mother

I can’t help it. I’m going to tell you all about my mother, who is 73 this year. This dispatch will be in the form of lists. Forgive me, but it’s the best way.

Things my mother and I disagree on:

1. What constitutes a sunny day. She says when the mist is more than 20cm from your nose, and the moisture only speckles your skin. I say you need to be able to see your shadow.
2. What constitutes food. She says anything, save for sushi and the mineral category of the Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral game. I say sushi counts, but half of the things in her refrigerator don’t. Yesterday I removed something from her refrigerator whose use by date was November 19, 1999! My friend Roger came into her kitchen, idly cast his eyes over her spice rack and shouted in alarmed tones “My God! I remember this particular brand of spices, Woodwards, from when I was a child in the 70s!” I looked more closely. She had little bottles of 1 and 3/4 oz of fennel and cinnamon – clearly purchased before Canada went metric! These spices have been sitting on her shelf for nearly 30 years. (Roger later told me that his mother buys masses of tinned foods, especially soups, every time that she finds them on sale. Consequently, there are hundreds and hundreds of tins of food in their basement, and the stockpile grows every year. Roger says to me, in fearful tones, “I’m gonna have to deal with that food when they die!”
3. What constitutes a person. She’s never said anything outright, but I can see she counts her poodle, Frankie. Well, I love animals, but…
4. What constitutes such a level of human stupidity that one is entitled to remark, “That person is so unbelievably stupid!”. Maybe I’m intolerant. I dunno. But if she had to attend my photography class and listen to the dimwit questions posed by the other students, I’m sure she’d see things my way on this one.
5. What constitutes an attractive level of muscular development on a male. She doesn’t like my gym, or my muscles. She wants me to look like a starving refugee, I think. I don’t know why. She also doesn’t like the “gunk” I put in my hair, and says it would be nicer if it was “wispy”.
6. The appropriate disposal of one’s ashes after cremation. To scatter them on a beach or in one’s garden is, to my way of thinking, a beautiful thing. Mum, on the other hand argues with surprising vehemence and regular frequency – she brings it up all the time! – that my brother and I should divide her ashes into two little portions, so that we can each have a little box of her burned bones sitting on the mantle pieces. I dunno, but this rather morbid idea seems more suited to Third World political figures (ie the refrigerated glass coffins of Chairman Mao, Evita Peron, or Ferdinand Marcos). And what if I don’t have a fireplace? Mum is worried that without the visible reminder of her ashes, my brother and I will forget her. I tell her that I think of her every day, and that she will live inside of me forever, but she isn’t really convinced.

Things my mother and I agree on:

1. We love each other. And we love my brother.
2. Survivor is the MOST FANTASTIC AND COMPELLING television ever, and we are glad that Tina won.
3. Mum is a more inventive cook than me.
4. We love her garden. (She’s got a very green thumb!)
5. It’s better to have the TV on LOUD so that you can hear it properly.
6. Her boyfriend Hugh – whom she met on a blind date – is a very nice man. However, she did say to my friend Roger, “As for boyfriends, I think I want a younger one.”
7. Smoking is disgusting. (We both used to smoke.)
8. The best Thai curry is green, not red or yellow.

Strange things about my mother:

1. She drinks her tea out of a cup with a straw, and saves the straw. I find these little lipstick-encrusted tubes everywhere around the house.
2. She saves her used teabags on a plate, where they collect in a little pile. (I threw the pile out this morning.)
3. She loves science fiction movies, but is not so into the chick flicks. She’s been begging me to take her to see Return of the Mummy with Brendan Fraser. I refused, but offered my escort services to Planet of the Apes as a consolation prize, which she seemed to accept. She keeps asking when it debuts.
4. She can’t remember names, even mine, her first-born son who has been a major part of her live for 36 years. When she addresses me, I am splattered with a stream of names: “Martin….Roger…Frankie, Hugh…Martin…..uh, honey, would you…..”. Roger is my father’s name, Frankie is the dog’s name, Martin is my brother’s name, and Hugh is her boyfriend’s name. It’s weird.
5. My mother does aerobics to psyche herself up for her biweekly bridge game. The song she plays is Madonna’s Material Girl, but I don’t think she knows who Madonna is. I keep telling her she needs to breathe while she’s doing the aerobics, but she says she can’t. So she doesn’t keep at it for very long.
6. My mother may be a bisexual. She told me at lunch today that she could “swing both ways”. I narrowly escaped choking to death on my grilled chicken breast. She said she sometimes wonders what attractive young women look like with their clothes off. I have never wondered that.
7. My mother makes it a point of principle to transgress against the Native American Indians who live on the reservation lands near her house. (The fact is, we are certain to be living on a native burial ground or land of some other such spiritual significance.) I call her squaw, telling her she practically lives on the reservation.) She drives on their streets, despite signs saying “Reservation Lands, Residents Only Please.” “They drive on my streets, so I should be able to drive on theirs!” I think she’s getting bolshy in her golden years.
8. The ice cream truck drives up our quiet off road crescent frequently, and stops to linger on the street right outside our house. And only once it’s right outside our house does the truck driver start to play that super creepy dingly bell song. Despite my mother’s claim to have conquered her ice cream addiction, I think the ice cream truck has been here before.
9. She has a rather sinister-sounding coffee group meeting of older ladies every other week. I was evicted from the house for the duration of this meeting. I asked what the meeting was for. Mum said, rather cryptically, that “they discuss the things in the newspapers”.

Wonderful things about my mother:

1. She’s so open-minded. She came into the office room the other day when Roger and I are looking at personal profiles of gay men on the internet. “Go to the next one!” she commands. “He’s too ugly for you!”
2. She’s taken up painting and is very talented. Her watercolors are beautiful.
3. She agreed to look after my cats while I’m trying to figure out where to live and what to do with my life.
4. She likes all my friends, and boyfriends, who all think she is wonderful.
5. She makes lunch for me if I beg.