When Mom Has a Battle Plan, Just Put Up the White Flag
My mother is visiting for the holidays. Those words usually send single, middle-aged sons into long drinking binges and open-ended therapy, but does it have to be that way?
No, it doesn’t.
This isn’t going to be one of those weepy “Ode to Mom” offerings that desperate columnists write when they’re out of ideas. We do those on Mother’s Day. No, this will be a dispassionate report on how the temporary occupying force known as “Mom” has changed life behind four walls.
She arrived 10 days ago with one piece of carry-on luggage and two suitcases. Concealed somewhere in the luggage was The Blueprint, the carefully concocted plan by which she means to transform my dwelling unit into a home.
Seven years ago, I was in a rare mood to improve my life and commissioned Mom and one of my sisters to convert my new residence into a place “where humans might want to spend time.” That prospect and the subsequent handing over of my Visa card caused them to begin softly weeping with joy, and they stayed a week, calling me often from the field with updates on how their shopping was going.
As a football team owner once said about his coach who lavished big salaries on players, I gave them an unlimited budget and they exceeded it.
In the end, though, they did a creditable job, even earning a special citation from Chapman University economists for their impact on the local economy.
Since then, the nest hasn’t changed much. Left to my own devices, it would mutate about as quickly as the Rocky Mountains. A new light bulb qualifies as interior decorating.
Mom, I believe, considers herself on a mission. From what I can tell so far, her plan seems to be to move from room to room, like an occupying army securing a hostile area. Naturally, she began in the bathrooms and the kitchen, my two least fortified positions and most vulnerable to outside attack.
She struck forcefully and quickly. The upstairs bathroom now has two blue rugs I’ve never seen before, although they look as though they may have migrated from downstairs. There’s a little blue towel over the shower door and, would you believe it, water doesn’t splash on the floor anymore.
Instead of opening the refrigerator door and seeing my reflection off the empty panels, I now see food. Fruit, vegetables, orange juice, leftovers--they’re all there.
Instead of dust and empty plates and glasses, the cupboards now have canned goods and cake mix and Fig Newtons. Instead of silence, the first thing I detect in the morning is the smell of oatmeal or coffee on the stove. Dinners once caught on the fly now wait on the table.
I came home one day from work and discovered many new things. Hanging from the stairway railing, where my dirty socks usually perch, were two Christmas stockings with our names on them. A string of Christmas lights rested in the windowsill and blinked merrily at the mere flip of a light switch--a light switch I don’t think I’d ever touched. A miniature Christmas tree that was in a box stood atop the stereo cabinet. A plant that was over there was now over here, and it looked marvelous. Place mats buried like Incan treasure in a kitchen drawer now were on the dining room table. A new throw she bought me for Christmas now graces the sofa and adds a warmth that wasn’t there just the day before.
There is more work to be done. I’m not even sure she’s up to Page 2 yet of her plan. Perhaps not even she realized the magnitude of the task.
She rested over Christmas, but she’ll mobilize again. I let slip that I could use a new mattress; coupons and sales from linen companies now dot the landscape of my shelves. Already there is talk of moving the two large bookcases downstairs. I’m resisting, but she’s shown so far she has the tanks and I have only rocks. The best guess is that it’s only a matter of time.
She has another three or four weeks to her visit. I may be the master of my domain, but I know it is a domain that won’t look the same a month from now. Just a hunch, but I see more greenery in my future.
Consider this, then, only a preliminary report.
And the findings are these: The conventional wisdom is that a parent arrives at a grown child’s house--”invades their space” is the popular terminology--and the child grins and bears it.
I must respectfully dissent.
She arrived, and guess what?
Suddenly, it seems like all the lights have been turned on. Suddenly, the winter seems unusually bright.
Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.