THE TRIP

Hey You. I am here.

I know, I know... bad, bad Hugh. I was sorting through some things, trying to gain some perspective, and I had to do it alone. While I normally eschew the notion of Guilt, in this case my Guilt made me think of You and that made me feel Known and that was reassuring.

C’mon, that line was pretty good.

So your e-mails, calls and gifts were not in vain. I used them like magical powers found under rocks on this level of the Game. Hughstation 2. Hula Boola: The Awakening. The object of the game, however, is to keep moving so I’d tuck them quickly in my belt and dash on.

Polly and I went to visit my Mother and family in Florida for the holidays. I had planned to stay for nearly a month but less than 24 hours after my arrival I realized Aliens had stolen my Mother’s brain and replaced it with that of someone else, perhaps a teenage boy or a bachelor fresh out of college. It’s the first time she’s ever lived alone. Ever. She has released her Inner Tom Cruise, sliding metaphorically across the floor to celebrate her new freedom. My mother’s lifelong anal retentiveness has taken a much needed vacation. In some areas it has left Dodge completely, wandered off with vultures circling on the horizon.

I sat on a chair in front of the fridge and purged Alien Food - an open can of asparagus (canned asparagus!), endless jars of jelly with a remaining half inch of goo, bottles of salad dressing dated in the last millennium. It was as if she had decided the effort involved in finishing anything was too much work. As I filled the trash, I’d vainly cry out in disgust. “What are you thinking? Do you know how many germs are here?” My mother sat watching TV and absentmindedly responding. “Ok” she’d remark to Me, the Killjoy Parent.

It wasn’t that she Couldn’t, it was that she Could. Her life alone has morphed into a set of choices rather than a set of obligations. Refrigerator, not so high on the list, however she can scrub the kitchen floor twice a day. Four times a day, ten times a day! She can scrub the kitchen floor all night! She could eat whenever and whatever she wants, another point of contention. Were it left to her, I’d just have to learn to live on Krispy Kremes and Turkey Stuffing.

Suddenly i felt like... the Adult! Merry Fucking Christmas! I was the Elder Diplomat sent from Maturia to her strange world. Entertainment on Planet Mother centered around two things, The Lord of The Rings and horror movies. No, really. My mother has been hoarding a secret Nerd inside, one who has seen LOTR :The Two Towers over thirty times. One who owns most of the Freddy and Scream franchises. The request from the Blockbuster was Jeepers Creepers 2 but I refused to surrender two hours of my life.

DVDs I Watched In Florida:

LOTR: TTT - three times
Charlie's Angels Full Throttle - twice
LOTR: TFOTR - twice
X-Men 2
Matrix Reloaded
27 Days Later - not scary enough for the Mother Figure
The Ring - not scary enough for the MF
Scream 3
Dracula and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - My mother owns and has an unnatural obsession with both. Instead of music, she’ll pop one of them on and watch it like you watch an aquarium.
Hedwig and The Angry Inch - my sister owns it
Bowling For Columbine - MF: “Well that was wild.”
Finding Nemo
Metropolis - MF: “Well that was wild.”
About Schmidt
Catch Me If You Can
Chicago
A Mighty Wind

Last year my mother admonished me for having a drink now and then. This year, the bottle was on the table. Cocktails during a flick became a whimsical habit, like adults in Sixties movies. On New Year’s Eve she bought a shrimp platter to eat with the spinach dip and crackers.

Polly was a huge success. My mother doted and cooed over her endlessly, a fount of treats until Polly just followed her around like an ice cream truck. “Look at her”, my Mother would say, “she looks so sad”. Polly’s natural expressions read melodramatic as if Polly were Mary Pickford or Norma Shearer. My mother has three cats and the concept of canine attachment was foreign. “Why does she follow you around so much?” One of her cats is a stray that wandered into her house five years ago and remains unnamed. It’s That Big Black Cat or That Damn Black Cat. Less a cat than an ottoman, it weighs in at a whopping 24 pounds. Her and her three cats have set up their coexistence, all of them coming and going as they please, sleeping, eating, scattered over the furniture like jackets.

My Grandmother, my Mother’s mother, is in the process of dying. She has lived a long life, 86 so far, and her longevity creates the impression she will live forever. She lived through the Great Depression, a Prairie Woman whose mindset was Survival even when the effort became pointless and she had more than enough to take care of herself. She was a Hoarder and as a child I would wander between walls of newspapers and magazines, huge bolts of fabric, boxes of women’s hats. “You just never know.” I’d look into enormous cartons full of hangers and envision the day I’d receive several hundred coats and need them all. “You just never know.”

Actually, I do know. My name is Hugh and I am a Hoarder. Hello Hugh! I have walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Crap Everywhere and I have come to the other side. I realized that at the end of a life hoarding Things, you’re left with a bunch of Things. My Grandmother’s Things are restless. Her family is already claiming Theirs, eyeing the remains. The whole subject hovers around their conversations, like a wild animal eager to pounce. I have neither interest nor claim to any of it. I have everything I want and no idea what my Grandmother’s house stores. I have oodles of cousins who live near her and do know. Have at it. I suggested to my Mother they have a race with a clock and see who’d leave with the most.

What would I grab? Remember those big tissue paper flowers she’d make in the Seventies? Are there any of those anywhere? You know those big brooches she had from the Fifties? The ones shaped like a starburst and the size of a small dinner plate? Any of those?

My Mother has transferred the concept to my sister and me. Any hint of admiration about anything prompts her to offer it, driven it seems by a fear that my living afar would keep me from getting what I want should something happen to her. My sister and I (driven, perhaps, by our own denial on the subject) find the concept silly. Knowing it was our Mother’s Achilles Tendon, we would wickedly improvise fake arguments over certain objects - ceramic figurines of birds, an old wooden trunk we called Ye Olde Treasure Chest. Sometimes we’d pick a particularly odd subject - an enormous macramé hanging which looks like Whoopi Goldberg hair - and politely insist the other take it. No, really, you can have it. No, you should. Didn’t you always say you loved that? No, that was you, dear. No, no. I insist.

I could comfort my Mother, wisely urge her to talk to my Grandmother, “Complete your communication”, really Dr. Phil it up. I decided not to because part of Living Alone is Being Alone, choosing How To Deal, where Things should be placed. My Mother has her own life to lead, her own timeline and destination, her own Game to maneuver. It may not turn out like she expects, but I know it will all turn out.

Despite and because of your efforts it’s turned out or all of us, for you and for me. Polly and I got back to our apartment and our own things and on the first day home we wallowed on the cotton sheets just because we Could.

2:20:57 PM    sro home /