Hi, mom!

I talked to my mother last night—a conversation which centered mainly on the fabulousness of Gene Tierney’s Oleg-Cassini-designed dresses in some movie or other, but which also touched upon my “falling down on the blogging this week”.

The fact that my parents read my blog fills me with an interesting mix of excitement (they’re reading my blog!), confusion (they’re reading my blog?) and horror (they’re reading my blog?!)… but since it’s my mom who got me thinking about blogging, I decided to feature her today.

It’s a weird thing – I keep getting older, but my parents seem to have stayed the same age for the entirety of my life. I mean, there’s nothing discernibly different about them now as opposed to, say, ten years ago (except that my dad had, like, a lot more hair, but that hardly counts as he's hardly in Bruce Willis territory). And because of that, I’m still under the cheerful illusion that they will remain forever present in my life just as they are now – interesting, entertaining, available for weekly phone calls, AND still fully capable of remembering their own names.

Not all cheerful illusions last forever.

Telephone conversation with my mom, week of 1/15/07

Kat: Hey there, mom.
Mom: Hello, honey!
Kat: What are you up to?
Mom: Oh, just sitting in the living room. Your father and brother will be home soon from soccer.
Kat: Nice. I –
Mom: Hey, what’s that?
Kat: Huh?
Mom: (sounding distracted) How odd, it’s… it’s people! People, coming out of the washing machine!
Kat: What? Mom, are you—
Mom: (clearly paying no attention to me at all) Oh, they’re clowns! Clowns, they came out of the washing machine, how funny, and—oh, hang on, honey, your father just walked in the door.

For the next five minutes, I sat dumbly with the phone pressed to my ear, listening while my mother greeted my father, told him that dinner was in the kitchen, asked him to bring her some tea when he came back out, and did not mention once that she had seen clowns crawling out of our washing machine. Which led to a whole slew of questions, but mostly: What the fuck? and, Does my father also see the clowns? and, Are my parents suffering early-onset dementia?

My mother came back on the phone a minute later, proceeded to tell me all about the trials and tribulations of costuming this year’s high school spring musical, and then about what she’d made for dinner, and then about her plans for that weekend.

She did not mention the clowns.

I decided not to ask. Assuming that – were my mother to be hallucinating clowns in our household appliances – it was likely that she would mention it when she saw them coming out of oh, say, the refrigerator, at which point I could say, “Mom, we need to talk about this clown thing,” and we would all sit down together and have a plain discussion about the dangers of LSD, and then maybe some ice cream.

But, a week later, I began to falter. What if something was really wrong? What if my mom was losing her mind? Or what if – god forbid – the clowns were real? What if there were, in fact, grease-painted interlopers emerging from the front-load washer and wreaking havoc in our house, in a scene that was far too eerily reminiscent of “The Indian in the Cupboard”?

Telephone conversation, week of 1/22

Kat: Hey there, mom.
Mom: Hello, honey!
Kat: Listen, there’s something I need to ask you.
Mom: Sure!
Kat: Well, the other day, when we were talking…
Mom: Yes?
Kat: You said that you… um. That you, um, saw some clowns? Coming out of the, er… out of the washing machine?
Mom: I said wha…. Oh! Yes! I mean, no, it was something on television. There were clowns coming out of the washing machine, on television.
Kat: Oh. Ok.
Mom: Wait a minute, did you—
Kat: No, I just –
Mom: You thought I was hallucinating clowns coming out of the washing machine, didn’t you.
Kat: Well, I…. um… I was concerned.
Mom: Have you lost your mind?

-scene-