War Zone

I brace myself for what will follow the cheerful call back introduction. I am not sure I am breathing. I guess if I turn blue we'll know for sure.

I want to derail the conversation before it starts but Mom has a way of running the railroad.

She starts off by saying that she's heard that I've become very friendly with a few of my cousins and that she can't stand them. She thinks they killed her brother.

Before you clutch the pearls and reach for the glycerin pills, let me assure you that no one took an ax and gave her brother forty whacks. He died of heart disease. She thinks his children caused it. And no, they weren't cooking for him.

She thinks that the infighting in their family (and the family business) gave him heart disease and killed him. His heart was broken. They broke it. By putting a heart disease whammy on him. She thinks they are no less responsible for his death than they would be if they had put ground glass in his turkey tetrazzini. A direct correlation. Blood on their hands. Out, out damn spot.

Now, any reasonable person would know that this is just a tin bucket brimming with bullshit, but Mom has a way of convincing herself that she is scarily, psychically right all the time. Even as she quotes old wives tales. She truly believed that my fertility woes in my 30s were a direct result of swimming practice in my teens. (And trust me, I was not killing myself in the pool like an Olympic contender. I swam on the local swim team. Cleaning my house is more rigorous exercise.) And once Mom has convinced herself that she's cracked the case, there is nothing that reason or logic can do to pry her cockamamie theory from where it's wedged between her brain hemispheres.

But like a friggin' Pollyanna, I try to reason with her. I tell her that heart disease can't be given to you (well unless someone is force feeding you duck fat and bacon grease sandwiches) and that her brother had a disease that would have killed him had he been blissfully happy and turning cartwheels with joy.

"THEY ABSOLUTELY KILLED HIM!" she screeches in a voice that could split an atom. "WHAT THEY DID TO HIM BROKE HIS HEART!"

So I ask her how she knows what she thinks she knows about the situation. I ask her if she ever spoke to the cousins she blames. It's not like she's afraid of confrontation. Did she ever pick up the phone and accuse them and see what they had to say for themselves? How they explained away their conduct? What motivated them to make the decisions they did about the business they co-owned?

Poking the bear rarely gets you anywhere good. I need to learn this.

Again, in a voice that could change the course of the tide, she bellows, "I DON'T NEED TO ASK THEM!!! I TALKED TO MY BROTHER!!!!"

Recognizing that she has never embraced the "there are two sides to every story" philosophy, I punt. "Mom, we are not going to agree about this. I'd just as soon agree to disagree...""

I'd had more to say but I had a better shot at an audience with the Pope than speaking my mind that day. She continued to rant about how I could dare spend time with those people and God being her witness and blah-dee-blah-dee-blah-dee-blah. She was still ranting when I said I needed to hang up. And she was reaching a fever pitch when I clicked my phone to silence.

Somehow, I was sure I had not heard the last word on this topic. And somehow, a thousand other sins would be heaped upon me when we touched down in the war zone again.