Holiday 2021 -- Xmas Eve

Christmas and Christmas Eve were multi-part affairs.

Christmas is a holiday for the caregivers, so I got a Covid test last week and was the official caregiver for the mama on those days. And only two visitors are allowed at a time at her place, and our nephew's family was going to be in town. So...I picked her up in the morning and then we visited family at our house and then we returned to her place for dinner and sleep because our house is under construction.

I know that my nephew said we should do something simple, but I also needed to do something that registered as festive for my mom, since we weren't having a classic Guy Family Christmas. So I made lunch for us all with stuffed potatoes. It was so fun to see them, and the boys are cat crazy and chased the cats around for a few hours and the mama was happy. Then we went back to her place.

I had brought presents and a simple dinner with expensive ingredients: lobster and shrimp ravioli, truffle butter and fancy gelato. And wine. I brought wine.

First there was the wine argument. I made dinner and poured wine for us. Admittedly it was 4:45pm, but that is 15 minutes past mealtime in mamalandia. She did not like the idea of wine at all. 

Mom: "Why are we drinking wine with breakfast?" 

Me: "It's dinnertime, and wine is a dinner beverage." 

Mom: "Don't we have any milk? We shouldn't be drinking wine because it's not ours to have. And what if they saw us drinking it?" 

Me: "I bought the wine, I brought it here, it is my wine, and I will drink yours if you don't want it." [I'm just realizing that this has a bit of the Peter J. Haskett cadence -- "You drank all the wine. You drank alllllll the vodka. You will go to O'Looney's and buy me more vodka."]

Mom: "You are just too clever"

Then she got wrapped up in the time of day, since that had been confusing to her. This is her challenging the clock, which sits on the wall under the thermostat.

It took me a while to figure it out, but a lot of the conversation during dinner came back to a central theme -- a desire to move somewhere else.

"People here are ok but people over there [points in direction of nearby wealthy city] are more sophisticated"

Translation: I think I'm more sophisticated than the other residents in my community and would like to live over there where people are more sophisticated and would understand me better.

"What will I do with all of this stuff?"

Translation: I want to move somewhere else, I feel overwhelmed by my possessions, and don't know how to move to a new place and/or get rid of my stuff.

Then she wanted to talk about Christmas ornaments. She proclaimed many many many many times that this was her favorite one. It is, indeed, super cute:

Oh yeah. Dinner. I have confirmed that I don't like lobster or truffles. And the mama didn't seem to be enjoying her dinner either. When asked if it was to her liking, the sophisticated lady stuck out her tongue and gave me a Bronx Cheer. I asked if I could make her something else more to her taste and she answered "Bran flakes".

Bran flakes it was.

Opening presents was also a great sadness for her. There were too many. She wished someone had given her just a scarf. People would think she was a Mrs. Gotrocks (woman of unseemly wealth).

So many rules, man. So many rules.

I slept on the sofa because I couldn't exactly figure out where the ladies had hidden the speaker for the bed alarm. After I tracked it down, I took refuge in the guest room and fell into grateful slumber.

One last thing -- a 93-year-old baby shoe. It's one of my favorite Christmas ornaments. It cradled the foot of a cheerful little child who is now my cranky mama.