Meditations on Mom Mom
My grandma lives in a temple of Eros
My grandmother (“Mom Mom”) is ninety-one, and lives in Miami. She says I haven’t seen her in three years, but I think it’s been more like ten. She’s not senile, exactly, but she’s kind of forgetful, and it’s hard to tell how much is forgetfulness versus something else, because at this point she’s ninety percent deaf and fifty percent blind. She walks with a walker and has to be bathed daily by her aides.
She’d be a really sympathetic character if she wasn’t also really mean.
#
Mom Mom: You have a job?
Me: Nah.
Mom Mom: You need a job.
Me: I kinda don’t. Selling the company went well.
Mom Mom: You don’t wanna work? You’re lazy.
Me: I’m retired, mom mom.
Mom Mom: You’ve always been lazy. You’re the laziest white kid I know.
#
I step into her condo. I haven’t been here in ten years, and the memories come flooding back; of vacations here with the family; of a brief trip here with my girlfriend Jos.
When I was here last, as a child or maybe a teen, I was very, very bored, and I very, very thoroughly inspected the apartment. With the exception of an oxygen tank in the corner, approximately nothing has changed about this apartment in the last ten years.
The floor, walls, and ceiling are white, except in the places where the walls are mirrors. The entire condo is not less than thirty percent mirrors, I’d say—two walls in every room are mirrors; the ceiling chandelier piece is mirrors, and in one strange hallway you can shut the door and find yourself in a little mirror cube where five-out-of-six walls are mirrors. (I jacked off in there as a teen, staring directly up at my reflection on the ceiling.)
There are (fake) flowers on every table, and the tables are glass. There are glass sculptures on every surface. She has a candy bowl of fake glass candy and a glass vase of fake glass roses. It is a shockingly inhospitable place for a child, and I remember living in fear of accidentally destroying one of Mom Mom’s glass tables.
But if the apartment has a theme, it’s...eros, maybe? Bewilderingly sexual.
The statuary (for there sure is statuary) is of nude women; the portraits are of women bathing. The couch is pink. In every single room there is some icon of a naked woman, which, again, was very interesting to me when I was fourteen. There are some kind of...burlesque puppets, on the couch? I genuinely don’t know how to describe these things. The lady puppet has pillow tits that are literal pillows. (I vaguely recall motorboating this puppet as a teen.)
The perfume in the apartment (for there is perfume) makes me sneeze and makes my eyes burn.
But if I’m being honest, I do kind of like it here.
#
We are at a fancy Italian restaurant. The live music, today, is provided by a man playing keyboard and singing. As the restaurant is closing, he finishes his cover of What A Wonderful World, to some cheers and applause.
Mom Mom is dour.
Mom Mom: I don’t see how people can clap for him.
I am sitting next to Mom Mom, the two of us adjacent in the corner booth seat. We have already exhausted all of our catch-up talk. She has asked me about my career plans (none) my relationship status (recently broken-up-with) my career plans, again (“Could you be a programmer? Do you think you’d like that?”), and I am floundering with what, even, to ask her.
My usual mnemonic cheat is FORD:
Family
Occupation
Recreation
Dreams
But her list is really quite bad.
Family: Me
Occupation: Waiting for death
Recreation: TV
Dreams: Hoping that I will want some of her stuff when she dies
So I’m sort of giving her an affectionate shoulder squeeze while scrolling through my camera roll on my phone. I’m pointing out different girlfriends I’ve had.
I’m sometimes lucky with the pictures: “Hey, I’m wearing that blazer you sent me!”
I’m sometimes unlucky (as I scroll real fast past my own shirtless photos).
There’s a forty-year-old couple staring at us from across the restaurant, looking genuinely scandalized. I don’t know if I’ve seen anyone look scandalized in real life before? And it’s only then that I understand they’ve parsed us as dating, or perhaps, dating for money for the night.
I don’t change my behavior at all, because I’m going to do my familial duty to this woman if it kills me.
Mom Mom: Is that Jos?
I look down. I am indeed showing Mom Mom a picture of Jos, getting married.
Me: Yeah.
Mom Mom: The slob?
I pause. When Jos and I visited Mom Mom ten years ago, Jos lived out of a suitcase rather than using the dresser which Mom Mom provided for her. This was apparently a nuclear provocation in Mom Mom’s etiquette, and Mom Mom has been bluntly letting me know she despises Jos ever since.
Me: I wouldn’t call her that.
Mom Mom: But she was more messy than you.
Mom Mom: (Looking at photo) Oh, she’s heavy now.
The waiter returns, to drop off our bill. It is, somehow, ninety dollars; Mom Mom ordered two iced teas, a salad, a side plate of salami and cheese, and the eggplant parmigiana served over spaghetti. She only ate the salad, and a single bite of the eggplant.
I ordered the ravioli porcini; it was fine.
Mom Mom: Are you still a good eater?
Me: ...I guess?
What does that mean, and was it ever true? I wonder.
Mom Mom peels the top layer of cheese off of her eggplant.
Mom Mom: Eat it.
Mom Mom: Make room on your plate.
This is how you gave dad an eating disorder, I think.
The restaurant is closing. The waiter comes by to give us the check, again. He has printed off a second copy, and now drops it on our table.
Waiter: Oh, whoops—looks like I already brought this.
Waiter: Don’t worry, you won’t be billed twice, haha.
He leaves. I drink water.
Mom Mom calls the waiter back, as she pours a third Splenda into her iced tea.
Mom Mom: I asked for Splenda and a lemon with this, could I get the lemon?
Waiter: Oh. Sure thing.
He returns a minute later with the lemon. He glances at the check without much hope, and then at Mom Mom’s walker under the table.
Mom Mom: Thank you.
Waiter: Yeah, no problem.
The restaurant is clearing out, because they’re closed. Mom Mom reads the bill like it’s a court summons.
Mom Mom: Nine is enough.
I glance at the bill and put together that she’s talking about the tip.
Me: On ninety-three dollars?
Mom Mom: Yeah.
Mom Mom: What did he do? He just mixed a salad in front of us. He didn’t do anything.
I watch her tip $9 on a $93 tab. I help her with her walker, and wait until she’s begun the process of laboriously departing the restaurant; then I slip two twenties under the check, with a little cash poking out visible.
I’m retired; why wouldn’t I.
#
We return to her apartment. I discover that the eye-burning perfume is because she has three (3) automatic-release “air fresheners” plugged into the outlets and spraying perfume into the air. It is way, way too much for such a small space.
I unplug them. I wonder whether she’ll notice.
My eyes fall on the webcams which dad has installed in her apartment, to periodically check in on her. I note that I will probably want to wear clothes around even after she goes to sleep. I note that my father is not entirely normal either.
Mom Mom: Sleep with me in my bed tonight.
Me: No.
Mom Mom: Why not? There’s plenty of space.
Me: Nah.
Mom Mom: (Annoyed) Richard,
(Dad’s name),
Mom Mom: That side of my bed is never touched. You can sleep there.
Me: I’ll take the couch.
She looks put out. I feel vaguely guilty.
I think, would I sleep in Mom Mom’s bed tonight, if I knew that NOT doing so would kill her?
I consider.
If I knew that she needed me to sleep in that bed, or else she would die in her sleep—then I would choose the couch.
#
I am sitting with her in the morning, two chairs facing the unplugged television. The aide will be here in an hour. We are watching the clock.
I am leaving in the afternoon, and once the aide arrives, we will probably be less able to talk. And, since I don’t think I’m coming back before her funeral, there will probably be no later opportunity to talk with her, about anything.
I feel vaguely like I ought to do some kind of...exit interview? I know very little about this person, honestly.
Me: Mom Mom, tell me about your life?
Mom Mom: I was married twice. I became a travel agent at fifty. And then I did all right until I had the first fall, which broke my leg, and the second fall, which broke my other leg and my elbow. I’m a cripple now.
Me: Er, but what about your life before fifty? Like, I hear you were married a couple times?
Mom Mom: I met Irving at an adult camp when I was eighteen. We fell in and got married. I had Arlene at twenty and you three years later.
Me: Me?
Mom Mom: (distracted) Richard. Your father.
Mom Mom: Then Irving and I broke up fifteen years later, because I didn’t love him.
Mom Mom: I married Vic later that year. He had money, and he owned car dealerships.
Mom Mom: He gave me a good life, but he wasn’t a nice man. We divorced after fifteen years.
Mom Mom: Then I got my social security benefit, and when Vic passed, I got his social security benefit too, and so now I live off that.
Me: …
Family
Occupation
Recreation
Dreams
Family + Dreams?
Me: Is there anything that you’d like me to do with my future?
Mom Mom: What?
Me: Is there anything that I could do that would, uh,
Me: Make you proud of me?
Mom Mom: Oh, Richard.
She pats my leg.
Mom Mom: I’m already proud of you.