I normally wouldn’t pick up during normal business hours, but I knew she’d be excited.
“I’m calling you from my new phone!”
“That’s awesome, Mom!” I would have faked excitement, but I didn’t have to.
“I love my new phone. You must have been wondering why I wasn’t calling you.”
Me? Wonder?
Me, the architect, the choreographer, the puppeteer in the wings of the stage, like so many caregivers of children, of adults, a thankless job.
She barely knew I was there.
She didn’t know I spent hours on tech support speaking to someone in Bangalore, that they told me they can’t do anything if no one is in the house, that it’s probably the phone and not the line. She didn’t know that I’d arranged a visit 3 days earlier but they never showed up, never texted like they promised. She didn’t know I was in the forums with other people with grammas and moms trying to fix things in the too-late hours of the night. She doesn’t know about my text threads with Cara, her angel of a Dementia Navigator, and my emails with Lissy, trying to coordinate someone to be there at a specific time, which is an impossible feat because the phone company only provides 4-hour windows.
And if I tell her, she’ll just get confused. Wait, is this Paul? And then she’ll forget.
“The phone sounds great, mom.”
“A man came to my door, such a nice man, and he said the problem was at headquarters and then he said he’d be right back. And he came back! He came back and told me the problem was fixed and BOOP my phone worked.”
Sitting in my office at day’s end, I nearly laughed out loud at her BOOP.
She always booped. It was HER! Deep under the misty haze, she was there. The new phone brought out a boop, which made it all worth it.
Mom had things she said that I’ve never heard from anyone else.
Like BOOP.
And Betcha Boots (as in “Betcha boots the bus will still be there when we arrive)
And Wrong Way Corgan (which I have no idea how to spell or what it’s from, but it’s something she’d say every time she made a wrong turn, which was a lot, and it’d make her laugh and slap the steering wheel.)
She had things, weird things, mom things, of which I’ll never know the origin. Secrets locked in her brain.
One of my earliest memories is sitting on the cool white tiles of our bathroom floor at 35 Jones Road and playing the sock game. I’d put both socks on one foot and then tell mom I lost the other one and she’d look around and behind her and then I’d peel off the sock from my well-socked foot, giggling, and she’d look so surprised and then she’d laugh or do the raspberries thing and then throw the sock up in the air and let it land between us.
“Gullible, Gullible, Gullible,” she’d say, something she’d keep saying well into my teens, whenever she missed my straight-faced sarcasm, which, admittedly, was a lot.
If I had 5 minutes with her old brain, I’d talk to her about the sock game. I’d love to know if it really happened. Because, if that happened, it seems like I could believe every other memory too.
Now I’m involved in a different kind of trickery: the slight of hand of an off-set director. Cut to commercial, cue the rain, run it again!
“He was such a nice man. He said the problem was at headquarters. And then he told me he’d be back…”
A new storyline at least. I wonder how long it will last.
I put my feet up on the desk. Sometimes you have to just let the actors do their thing.
“And then he came back, like he said he would!”
[Zoom in on SON who is switching the phone to his other ear.]
“And then my phone worked!”
No boop this time.
[Slight disappointment on SON’S face]
“What a nice man,” says the son. “You’re lucky to be surrounded by such nice people.”
[Tight shot on SON’s eyes]
It’s a small thing, but I have to insert myself into the cast sometimes, like, put myself up on the stage, even if it’s in my own mind, an audience of 1.
“I just love my new phone.”
[And Scene! Roll credits over image of SON leaning back in office chair, camera pulls slowly away.]
Boop. That’s a wrap. Nice job everyone.
—
But, like a nice man, a good director’s job doesn’t end after the credits.
Wait ’til she gets her new washing machine.