The Morning After

Mom has been very industrious since our last conversation. She has made some calls, formed some opinions, thought up a few zingers.

And may I simply repeat that I think it is the end of civilazation as we know it now that my mother has learned to text. It is her chosed medium. What better way for her to make her point (insipid as they can be) without interruption (because who can resist?) and without the threat of being hung up on before finishing the last incendiary statement? She is the mistress of her domain, at least if you ask her.

One of the topics she'd covered the day before, prior to taking a match to the powder keg, was about some of my Dad's belongings. She wanted to know where his wedding ring was (because God knows he wasn't wearing it!) and what happened to the gold Italian horn necklace she'd gotten him when she got him the Earth shoes he never wore and tried to convince him to grow out his crew cut and get a curly perm). I dodge the Italian horn question. I used to wear it (like every Irish girl would) but lost track of it in college. For all I know it went down the drain in the showers of third floor Stine Hall or fell off in a mosh pit dance party at Phi Delta Theta's Spring Blow Out never to be recovered from the beer mud.

I answer the question about his wedding ring with absolute candor and honesty. I had offered it to my brother Joe when Dad had died, but his first reaction was not one of sentimentality. It was of greed. He said, in that big, dumb guy voice "Wonder what I could get for dis if I sell it?"

And I had plucked it from where he gripped it between his grubby finger and double-jointed thumb and taken it from him. I did not dare tell Mom where it is stashed, fearing a smash and grab break in. We all know from the Open Door/XBox/Cat Poop debacle that my brother has no boundaries, natural or otherwise.

So her first text (with an imposed character limit, courtesy of her Trac-fon) concerned the wedding ring. She says she'd spoken to Joe and he doesn't remember it being offered to him (because he has the long term memory of a sand flea) and that if he had it, he'd cherish it. (Clearly not his words. My brother doesn't know what "cherish" means. Not to say he doesn't cherish things. He just never got to that vocabulary list in high school).

My intention is to ignore her text. Hello, I have day time television to watch, and a novel to read, and people watching to do.

But she sends another one. A weapons grade doozy.

She blathers on and one for several texts about what horrible people Charlotte and I have become. We "stole everything" from Dad's house and Joe didn't get anything. We are selfish, self centered bitches who think of no one but ourselves.

I have so many things to say I want to call her and rail against her in a voice that sounds like God's mother and let her know what a misguided lunatic broom-riding witch she is to even think those things.

But I can't. I am in the Jury Assemby Room with 2,000 registered voters and their various and sundry grooming issues.