King of the Road

I leave on Friday with 2 kids, a car, a cooler, 2 suitcases, 17 floatation devices, 3 novels, a backpack full of middle school summer homework (what?), a 1000 piece puzzle, an undisclosed amount of wine, and a laptop. This is when I am most thankful to not have a dog.

We are driving to a charming little hamlet my sister and her husband hold near and dear, and which I have come to love myself over the years. My kids call it the quietest place on Earth. And it may be. Until they arrive.

And even if I manage to keep their voices down and the pre-pubescent bickering from reaching a fever pitch, I have exactly one day of lush, green, peaceful, dewy, mountainous lakeside existence before the peace is shattered into smithereens by the arrival of Estelle with Bill in tow.

Even if she doesn't make a sound, the very arrival is cataclysmic. She could cut the engine and roll into town, creep in on little cat feet as has been said about the fog, tiptoe silently through the tulips...but even if I were sleeping, somehow on a cellular level (and I don't mean I'd be warned by the villagers by a call to my cell...) I'd know she was there...and my hair would suddenly be on fire, and my brain waves scrambled, and I'd be stripped of my ability to speak.

This is the power of my mother.

When we were kids, like all little girls, my sister and I would often explore the contents of her dresser drawers. Not the boring ones with clothes in them, the ones with pictures, and scarves and belts and jewelry. It was always an adventure. The dangly baubles. The hilarious cat's eye glasses. The belt made from big square metal links that dangled down toward your thigh. But what struck me were all the watches. Lots of them. All beautiful. All dead.

I asked my mother about them one time. She said that no watch ever lasted on her arm more than a month or so, so she stopped wearing one. She said that someone told her that some people have more "electricity" running through them, and they overpower the watch.

Oddly, she also got shocked every time she used the iron. Any iron. I thought it was just an excuse. (Then it happened to me...)

I do not claim to be an expert (or even a novice really) about Electrophysiology, but in an odd way, what she said makes sense. With all the electrical impulses in our bodies telling body parts what to do, I suppose she could have an overload. She is quite literally a live wire.

And maybe keeping this in mind would be helpful in managing the days that will follow. Somehow it will guide my decisions and reactions when she has been running - and running at the mouth - for such an unfathomable duration, that my nerve endings are jangling and my hair is on end.

Perhaps periodically, I will have to move away from the static electric field that surrounds her, and let the overloaded circuits run off a little energy.

Maybe not. I have no idea really how to deal with this particular natural phenomenon. I do know this though:

If we are caught in a thunderstorm, we will not be standing under Estelle's umbrella.