Conversations with My Mother

Whenever my mother is flying anywhere, she likes to call me right before the plane takes off. Sometimes she wants to tell me where all of her important financial papers are (in a Talbot’s shopping bag apparently) just in case “the plane crashes” and “I die.” She has an obsession with death (although I notice that she quickly changes the subject whenever I ask her to tell me exactly how much money I can expect to inherit at her imminent demise).

Today, she called me at 1:30 to tell me that she was on the plane. And that Katie Couric was sitting across from her.

My phone rang again at 4:20. I saw her number on the caller ID, but when I picked up the phone, she didn’t say anything. My mother has had a cell phone since 1996 but still hasn’t exactly mastered the use of them.

At 4:30, the phone rings again. The plane never took off. She’s still at National and is now on a second plane. Katie Couric is still there. Apparently, she’s going to miss her broadcast tonight. And she’s helping the flight attendants hand out water (“showoff,” I said). And she has really great legs. All very valuable information.

This Lamp Better Have a Genie Inside

My mother has issues with driving on highways (even on the GW Parkway, which barely qualifies as a highway). Her highway phobia isn’t as crazy as it sounds (i.e., there are reasons for it that I won’t get into, because, ummh, they’re just not that interesting), but it does mean that there are a lot of places she can’t get to. She left a lamp at a lamp store in Old Town to be repaired about six months ago. The lamp store has (not surprisingly) been calling her and asking her to come get it. So, she asked me to do it. Lord Kissington and I went out to Old Town on Saturday. While we were out there, we had brunch (which included mimosas, a key ingredient in making the whole day slightly more bearable). Then we drove to the lamp store. As soon as I handed the woman who runs the store my claim ticket, she said,

“I called you about the lamp, right?”

I explained that she had called my mother, not me, because I do not want to be known as a person who sends her lamps out for repair and doesn’t pick them up for 6 months. I can be a person who wanders into a lampstore and gets really giggly about finials because she just had a couple of mimosas at brunch, however.

She goes off to the back to look for the lamp. She comes back 10 minutes later, telling us that she can’t find it. She goes off to look again. She returns empty-handed. She keeps asking if my mother could have already picked it up, and I explain that this is impossible. My cell rings. It’s my mother calling, so I go outside to take the call. I tell her that they seem to have lost the lamp. She’s dumbfounded. It turns out she was just calling for… some completely boring, unrelated reasons that I’ll spare you from. She also describes the lamp as a “ginger jar lamp.” I have absolutely no idea what that means. I go back into the store. Lord Kissington has now disappeared. Apparently, he’s in the back helping the woman look for the lamp, which is totally insane since he has no idea what the lamp looks like, other than that it’s peach.

They didn’t find the lamp, of course. We left the store and decided to drive to Pentagon City because I (apparently feeling supremely masochistic) wanted to stop by the mall. After 20 minutes at the mall, we were both frazzled and cranky (but I did get a free lipgloss at Sephora!). We had split up to go to different stores and had both become quickly overwhelmed by the crowds and general ickiness. It took us a while to find each other, since our phones didn’t work in the mall. As we were heading back to the car, I noticed that my mother had left me multiple messages.

Lo and behold, they had found the lamp. So, we drove back to Old Town. Only when we arrived, it had been temporarily misplaced. Again. But they did manage to locate it after a few minutes. We paid for the repairs and left. I came really close to smashing the stupid lamp on the sidewalk outside the store. Clearly, I have anger issues. On our way back, some friends called and invited us over for drinks. Like the mimosas at brunch, this went a long way toward making the day bearable.