Getting on the same page

I called mom earlier this week to see if she wanted to have dinner on Mother's Day.

"Oh, hon," she said, "it's not worth it. You can't get in anywhere, it's so expensive, and the food's not all that great."

At least she won't have to worry about restaurateurs knocking down her door to promote Mother's Day meals.

In most families, a statement by your mom to this effect would be construed as passive-aggressive: What mom's really saying is that you and your brothers had better have already made reservations at a nice restaurant that's not too loud. And a gift would be nice.

But we're not most families.

This was supported by the fact that my middle brother was spending Mother's Day taking his son to the airport to go to Disney World. My youngest brother didn't even return my calls. My mother's sister was celebrating both Mother's Day and her birthday today, and her daughter was having a big brunch at 2:00. My mother was planning to go. There was no way my mother was going to want to have dinner.

I was about to call my mother to wish her a happy Mother's Day, but she beat me to the punch.

After giving her my best wishes, she proceeded to get to the point of her call.

"Honey, I'm having a hard time printing out a Web page on Paul Harvey. The first page prints, but then I can't get the rest of it to print."

I knew then I should have booked a reservation for dinner.

"Ma," I said, already realizing that patience was not going to be my Hallmark gift this year, "tell me what you're trying to do."

"Well, I typed in 'Paul Harvey commentator' and got the page," she said, as if there was only one, "and his wife just died and I'm trying to print it but only the first goddamned page comes out. I must have printed it 15 times yesterday. I wasted so much paper."

"OK, Ma," I said, taking a deep breath, "now tell me what page you're on."

"The one where you type 'Paul Harvey commentator' and it comes up. I want to send it to Ronnie."

I know now why tech support people are hated; it's because they have to listen to things like this all day and after a while they simply can't contain their contempt. My mother has been using a computer for 15 years, and she still acts like conspiracy theorists and hamsters are running it. There's always some implied Communist plot to thwart her efforts to use the computer correctly. So I always have to put on my Encyclopedia Brown hat and try to figure out what's going on in that brain.

Now, before I continue, I tried to ignore that mom was printing out some right-wing drivel to send to her right-wing monk boyfriend in California. But that's a whole other story. We'll save that story for some pagan holiday.

"Ma," I said, "go to the top of the page and tell me what the name of the Web site is."

"It says WGN."

"Beautiful," I said, as I searched Google results. At least now we could be on the same page. "Why do you want to print this out?" I asked, looking at the scary picture of Paul Harvey, who looks like a cross between Dick Clark and Howdy Doody.

"His wife died last week and I want to print it out and send it to Ron."

I shook my head, wondering why, in this day and age, anyone would have to print out an article and send it by snail mail to anyone else in the United States. Then I remembered that mom's "boyfriend" lives in a cloistered abbey, where apparently he does not get news about the real world. Except that he does interact with lay people and can freely move about when he wants to, including going to newsstands. I remember once my mother asked me to scour the earth to find a book for Ron that was banned by the Church in the 1950s. The book was called "Satan."

Back to the task at hand. On the Web page was the waxy figure of Paul Harvey, and at the bottom was the obituary of his wife Lynne. It was all so sweet: Paul and "Angel," as he called his wife, had been married for 68 years, which is almost as long as my mother's been alive. Mom had an awful marriage to my father that lasted 41 years, and her one true love was a cloistered monk. So I think of her romantic idealism with some bemusement. But now my main goal was to get her damn story to print.

"OK, Ma, go down to the end of the page and look for the beginning of the story on Lynne Harvey."

"OK, got it."

"Now, to the right of that, do you see a little icon--uh, picture that looks like a printer." She said yes. "Click on that little printer."

She clicked on the printer. "OK, now it says, Close Window."

When you click on the printer icon, a separate window with the full story opens and immediately scrolls to the end of the story, where a Close Window button appears.

"Yes, you're right, it does say that," I said, "but click in that window and go to the top....You see the picture of Paul and Lynne?" I said, as if we were old friends. "They're holding a sign up?"

"Yes, yes, I see it."

"Now go to File Print."

"Where?" Ay ay ay.

"Where you usually go to print documents," I said, hoping she'd understand that.

A few minutes later, I heard the printer clicking away.

"Oh!" mom said, "it came out!" Praise Jesus. "I've never seen that printer thing before. I would have been here till kingdom come trying to print that out. Thanks a million, hon, you're a genius."

I would have preferred "saint," but "genius" will do.

"Oh, yeah, about dinner. I think we'll do it another time," she said. "It's gonna be so crowded and we'll have to wait for a table." I was going to explain that not all restaurants in my neighborhood would be crowded, but I've learned from experience that when mom says she doesn't want to go out, that's what she means. As corny as it sounds, getting her document to print was probably the best gift I could have given her today.

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The healing power of Chris

I wasn't in the mood to go to the gym tonight, but it was our first beautiful Spring evening. Plus, I vowed this year to take better care of myself. The past few months were dark and wretched. I let the stress of my job knock me to the ground and stomp all over me. I ended up with a nasty virus--or some kind of illness--that TKO'd me for 3 whole weeks. A chronic hacking cough, fatigue, and endless post-nasal drip were my constant companions for almost a month. The doctor said I had run down my immune system to the point where I developed temporary asthma. He put me on an inhaler and said whatever I had would have to run its course. So a few weeks later I'm rested, the asthma is gone, and I'm back in the ring, getting my strength back and trying to roll with the punches. Boxing has always been my therapy, but for the past few months even that wasn't working. So I checked out for a bit.

Outside the gym tonight 6 or 7 production trailers lined the street. This is not an unusual sight, since the street the gym is on is off the beaten path and perfect for filming movies and TV shows. A few weeks ago a trailer had "Lucy" and "Desi" on the doors, and I thought, Oh God, can there really be another "before the laughter" movie?

As I was coming in to the gym I saw Julie, a fellow boxer, at the front desk.

"What's with the trailers?" I asked.

"They're filming an episode of Law and Order," she said, hopefully.

"Woof! Chris Meloni!" I said.

"Oh my God, he's hot!" she said. "Have you ever seen Wet, Hot American Summer?" I said I hadn't. "I'll bring in the DVD for you."

"Can it be any better than his nude scenes on Oz?" I said. "After that, seeing him fully clothed in person might be a disappointment," I said.

I changed and started working out. It felt good whacking the bags and sweating. I completely forgot about the trailers outside, and after all, filming had probably long since wrapped up.

I was having a particularly good round when Julie sidled up to me and said, "Don't look now, but Chris Meloni is at the front window."

I tried to act cool, but I looked over and there, less than 6 feet away from where I was sweating, stood the real Chris Meloni, in a dark suit, more handsome in person, signing autographs for some shameless gym members. Evil thoughts started forming in my head.

Damn these gloves! The 13-year-old girl in me wanted to yank them off and run right up to Chris Meloni with a pen and have him sign anything I could get my hands on. But I played it cool. I pretended not to stare at him. The bell rang and I started hitting the bag, never taking my eyes off Chris Meloni.

The therapy was definitely starting to work again.

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Four-hand Touch

I was all ready to dive back into blogging again when I got an invitation from my friend Michelle to join Facebook. So I did, and now I'm totally hooked. But that wasn't enough. Oh no. I accidentally dropped Luis's iPod Nano in the toilet and killed it. I felt terrible, even though it was my Nano to begin with. So the next day I went to the Apple Store to get him an iPod Touch, and well, next thing you know, we're a four-hand-Touch home. Between Facebook, the Touch, the family tree, and "Family Guy," you can understand why there's no time for blogging. I know I should probably reading books, but I'm too busy SuperPoking my friends.

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Who are you? Einstein?

I had lunch with mom a few weeks ago at Hinsch's in Bay Ridge, one of the truly last bastions of the Brooklyn of my teens. After the wood paneling was installed many decades ago, Time had one last burger there and decided never to return.

Whereas I like Hinsch's for nostalgic (and, admittedly, camp) reasons, for Mom it's a comfort zone where she can be with people like her--aging, freshly blue-rinsed white ladies eating bland, heavily salted meat and whispering about how the [Chinese] [Mexicans] [radical Islams] [yuppies] [Godfather's Pizza chains] have ruined the neighborhood. Sometimes I wonder if this place is some Magic 8-Ball window into my future, and I lose my appetite.

Mom has been doing well since her mini-stroke last June. She claims to have not smoked since she left the hospital. I think she sneaks one every now and then, but I concede it's better than her former pack-a-day habit. Still, the effects of 55 years of smoking are etched in every cell, particularly her brain. Her short-term memory is all but gone. She has to write down everything the second you tell her or she doesn't remember. Her long-term memory is still intact, though, which is good if I'm stuck on a name from 30 years ago.

But there's something going on her brain that, to my knowledge, doesn't have a name. I call it Reverse Jeopardy! Tourette's. The game starts with my mother asking a question, immediately followed by an answer that is almost always incorrect.

At lunch at Hinsch's, for instance, the conversation turns to Andrea's boyfriend.

"I'm so glad Andrea has a boyfriend," mom said.

"Me too," I said. "And he's a chef."

"Whereabouts? SoHo?" mom said.

My little kid self takes over at moments like this, and I become insolent.

"Now, Ma," I said, "what made you say SoHo?"

"I don't know. I heard there are a lot of restaurants in SoHo."

"But there are restaurants everywhere...even on your block," I reasoned. Then, realizing that I was being an idiot, I calmly said, "He's a chef at a place in downtown Brooklyn."

On some subconscious level, I'm both afraid and irritated. No one likes seeing their parents age, especially when they're walking around with misinformation in their heads.

This was not an isolated incident. A month earlier, I'd brought mom to the office to meet my co-workers. "Mom, this is Lou. He lives in Bay Ridge, too."

"Oh, whereabouts? 91st and 3rd?"

Now, Bay Ridge consists of about 300 blocks. Why Mom chose that specific block was baffling.

Lou didn't quite know what to say but matter-of-factly said, "No, 72nd and Ridge."

There's something going on in mom's head where she reaches into her database of stored information and pulls out something that fits with the situation. Her answer is partly correct, in that she understands that 91st and 3rd is in Bay Ridge, but somehow she doesn't realize the key is still in the ignition and the car door is locked. She can't quite tell her brain to stop in time before it's too late. Or maybe she doesn't realize that she's even answering her own question aloud.

A few years ago, while in Tipperary, we met a British couple at a pub. The first words out of mom's mouth were "Where are you from? Manchester?" Why London, where the couple was actually from, didn't occur to her first was a mystery to me. Then, a few days later, while having a drink at Bunratty, an American we met mentioned that he'd gone to school on Long Island. "Where'd you go? Chaminade?" While Chaminade is a school on Long Island, there must have been something about the guy that made mom automatically answer. Turned out the guy was Jewish and did not go to Chaminade, a Catholic school.

The other day I told mom I was going to Andrea's boyfriend's house for dinner.

"Where does he live? Windsor Place?" I tried to figure out why on earth she chose that particular block. It must have been because she knows her boyfriend is Irish-American and Windsor Place is in Windsor Terrace, which is an Irish-American neighborhood.

I took a deep breath, and instead of getting annoyed, I said, "No. He lives in Carroll Gardens."

"Oh, that's what I meant," she said.

Who knows? Maybe that was what she meant.

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Hazy shade of winter

This is my first blog entry of 2008. It's not for lack of things to say. It's that Winter has seduced me into its Downy-fresh lair, where food, drink, and napping are bountiful. In Winter's comfy den of flannel sheets and fluffy pillows, I can have as many chocolate bars, Stellas, and episodes of "Family Guy" as I want. Winter lets me relax in a warm, cosy chair for hours on end. It doesn't care whether I say or do anything. I do not need to look good in a bathing suit to make it happy. It doesn't care whether I work out. And it does not judge me for eating the 5 pounds of Cadbury's I brought from London--the 5 pounds that have now been added to my body and that I will panic over losing when the days start getting longer. Oh crap! Spring is coming in less than 6 weeks!

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