Mom's Visiting: Hide the Contraband!

         

 My Mother is coming for a visit. A long one. I like my Mom a lot, so there’s no problem there. But it does take a bit to prepare for her arrival.

Back in the day, that meant that shortly before she landed, I'd leap into a wild flurry of housecleaning.  That mostly involved stuffing things in drawers, vacuuming the floors and stashing various articles of drug paraphernalia. I’d usually miss something: rolling papers, a mini-bong, an empty bindle or two. No matter, she’d either not notice, or pretend she didn’t see while I shoved whatever it was into my underwear drawer.

Of course was that year she arrived stood on the patio of my first floor duplex and remarked on just how healthy my landlord’s pot plants were. She knew full well exactly what they were.  So much for that.

Things are a lot different now.  I don’t need to hide the pot ephemera – it’s virtually legal in Los Angeles, and I don’t smoke much anymore.

 I do still go into a frenzy of house cleaning before her visits. Which is weird if I think about it: mom’s a worse housekeeper than I am. Still, one likes to keep up the illusion.

But in addition to clean floors and sheets, now I have a few more things on my list.  Make no mistake: aging changes everything. Last year I had the plumber install grab bars in the bathroom. This year I measured the doorways to make sure her walker would fit.  I also located the nearest CVS Pharmacy so she could get her prescriptions here instead of schlepping them with her.

I ended up renting a car for the duration of her trip. I actually own two vehicles, but neither is suitable for mom any longer. The BMW is a low-slung two-seater which she can easily get into, but not out of. The SUV is too tall for her to climb into and she objects to being pushed into the passenger seat like a bag of grain. We’ve tried it a few times in the past and she dissolves into a fit of laughter, which makes it even harder to shove her in.  

A different vehicle is less amusing, but more appropriate.  So a rental car it is.

Shopping for anything is a chore to me but food shopping is torture. I look around at all those ingredients and am constantly amazed that people can throw them together and make actual meals. I rarely even try to cook.  I just don’t have that gene. Neither does Mom.

But I know Mom can’t survive on my diet of vegetarian junk food. So I took one for the team. I forced myself to go to Ralph’s and stocked up on the basics: bread, eggs, milk and coffee. I also loaded up on a few things I never have in the house: like candy. And really good Scotch.  Personally, I’m a bourbon drinker, but to each her own.

Part of the reason Mom is visiting is to get out of the winter weather. She’s coming from New England- Massachusetts - which has had a particularly awful January and February. It’s been below zero for weeks and has had a record amount of snowfall.  Naturally that meant that the day before she was due to travel, the snow came dumping down.

This created a certain amount of tension. Would the roads be plowed? Would her flight be cancelled? They were and it wasn’t.

She arrived today and is here for three weeks. The weather is going to be perfect, and I think she has a few PLANS. Three weeks sounds like a lot of time to do stuff.  It isn’t.

  

For one thing, I’m in school, and while class only takes two nights a week, I also have a writing group that meets on Thursday, and most of my days are spent working and writing.

Another problem is the Mom factor. Even in her youth she wasn’t a fast mover. Getting her up and going in the morning was always an issue. It’s become more so as she’s aged.

Also, Mom isn’t comfortable sitting in a car for hours on end any more. So the trips of the past - Joshua Tree, Santa Barbara and Hearst Castle - aren’t going to happen this time. It looks like we’ll probably go to the Getty, Descanso Gardens and maybe the Huntington.

Hell, we’ll be lucky if we do anything. My mare is due to give birth in the middle of Mom’s trip, and if that happens we’ll be visiting her and the baby every day. I mean, she wouldn’t want to do anything else, would she? Actually, I think she’ll settle for just seeing the sun almost every day. That the temperature is going to be the 80s is just a plus.