My Mom

I spoke to my sister today and we were giggling about Mom. I dread the day that Toby and Cupcake do the same thing but I guess it's an inevitable part of parenthood. I just hope I give them something good to giggle about.

Today it was Mom's particular cleaning mania. When there's any kind of emotional upheaval Mom takes it out on the house. If she's feeling a bit stressed at work she comes home and mows... all four acres. She also deals with stress by cleaning her car inside and out... every single weekend. At the moment I'm pregnant after two miscarriages and hoping everything is fine this time, my sister is moving to San Diego for at least three years, my brother is planning his wedding, my grandmother has finally had to go into a nursing home due to her dementia, Mom was fired from her job and Dad is having problems with his boss at work. So Mom takes it out on her closets.

Not just clearing them out but... wait for it... painting the inside of them. Mom and Dad have lived in this house for over ten years and in that time my brother, his little boy, my sister and my grandma have all spent time living there too. And they've all left stuff behind. I even have boxes of stuff at Mom and Dad's. You can imagine the task of empying each closet (six by my count, including a big walk-in one in their bedroom), painting it and then putting everything back. I would have to be held at gunpoint to do such a thing.

And here's the kicker, this is the thing that made me and Nikki giggle - Mom has painted the inside of all of her closets light blue so that they feel restful when you have to get something out of them. I blame HGTV. I bet that all across America women are proud of their restful closets after seeing some program on HGTV. Mom and Grandma are addicted to the channel but Mom's little mania definitely precedes satellite TV.

I remember one time in particular many years ago. Nikki didn't even remember it so she must've been quite young. It was in our house in Mesquite. In that house we had a linen cupboard at the end of the hallway and underneath it was a built-in laundry hamper. It was the kind of thing with a little hatch on hinges to drop the dirty clothes in and two cupboard doors underneath to get them out. Well, if you sat in one particular spot in our living room and, at that very same moment, someone was getting laundry out of the hamper you would be able to see the back wall inside the hamper. It was a laundry hamper so there wasn't much to see, just a white wall that had been scratched up a bit over the years.

Well, during some emotional time of which I can't remember the details Mom got it into her head that the chance of someone seeing into the hamper was a problem, so I came home one day to find Mom wallpapering the INSIDE of the laundry hamper. Just in case the planets were so aligned that someone (read this as 'company') would see inside it and be appalled.

It was around the same time that Mom became disgusted with her shower. Mom and Dad's bathroom had a shower stall with a white basin and no matter what Mom tried she couldn't get the basin as white and pristine as she thought necessary. Now, this wasn't for the sake of 'company' because no one used that bathroom except family and mostly just Mom and Dad. Mom decided to paint the basin. That doesn't sound so strange but she didn't do her homework and just used some paint we already had in the house. Who was the mug who took the first shower and discovered that Mom had used water soluble paint? Me. That's probably why I remember it so well.

Ah, mothers. And now I'm one of them.