Mission Impossible

Let me explain my mother.

As if such a thing can be done.

She is a swirling unpredictable combination of Goldie Hawn, Joanne Worley and Aurora Greenway of Terms of Endearment fame. Little bits of zany, and hippie chick, and comedienne, and staunch Republican (just to keep her tenuously tethered to Earth). Larger than life itself. Capable alternately of great acts of kindness and unthinkable public humiliation. Good or bad, you keep her close so you can see her coming. Like the locusts blowing in during some Biblical apocalyptic episode. She is exhausting.

But while she is baffling in her frenzied tear from opinion to opinion, from this plot to that scheme, one address to the next, and her oddly fickle collection of people worthy of her friendship and loyalty, Mom knows her own agenda. And she is driven to achieve it.

And here is where the latest side show with my brother has been an inconvenience. Mom has focused all of her energy on accomplishing one truly important mission and is fully cognizant that it is a wildly unpopular idea with her husband. She wants to move North *gasp* to be nearer to her family.

She also knows that while she would gladly embark on a solo mission, to do so would be a huge distraction, not to mention, a little hard to finance.

So she needs his buy-in. And to get that, she needs to make a very convincing argument, and make him think it has been his idea...not something she has manipulated in a carefully staged coup.

And if it is going to be his idea, all the notions that are counterintuitive to it must be muffled, suppressed, made invisible, brushed under the rug, concealed with smoke and mirrors, so that he does not remember why he never liked the idea in the first place.

At least until the ink is dry. Then all the warts can come out.

So engaging in an loud, divisive argument where sides are taken and lines drawn in sand, would remind him of at least a half a dozen reasons he should be running screaming in the other direction. He'd be calling real estate agents in Key West.

And here is where Mom is a brilliant tactician. Instead of her usual lobbying and filibustering, she stepped gracefully into Switzerland.

Without getting caught up in the details and the drama, she simply told my brother to write my sister a letter apologizing for his latest goof and by all means, don't argue with her. His responsibility, his letter to write. You made your bed, yadda yadda yadda.

Don't bother me. I've got a plot to hatch.