All seems "fine" in Becket. Peg back to her usual routine: get up, sleep, get up, empty catheter bag, sleep, get up, eat and take pills and watch the weather channel, sleep, get up, see what time it is, sleep, get up, eat, watch the Italian channel, sleep, get up, make a mess on the desk, cut up a few important and irreplaceable things, sleep, get up, eat, sleep. The routine punctuated only by the odd foray to Tina the Hairdresser's, the bank, a doctor's appointment--or the arrival of the Porchlight nurse, physio therapist, occupational therapist, Lynette the foot person, or--this last Saturday night for instance, five gay men bringing dinner.
Peg, with Terri and Bonnie's help, contributed devilled eggs. Which have always struck me as a summer picnic food, but my mother has never let the season, event or even menu interfere with what she feels like eating at the moment or hasn't "had for a while" or "would taste good". Hence, over the years, we have had numerous mother-daughter conversations along these lines:
"I thought I'd do Daddy a nice lamb stew for dinner tomorrow. He loves it."
"I'll help you. Want me to make that lime cheese salad?"
"What! No!"
"What are you going to have with the stew then?"
"Carrots! Leeks! Parsnip puree mashed potatoes! Or, I don't know, maybe parslied new little red ones or---"
"I feel like the lime salad."
"A nasty cottage cheese and jello salad does not go with lamb stew, Mother, all the gravy and--"
"I haven't had it in ages."
So end of the day I let her make the salad or whatever because I finally realized that my father would eat whatever was put in front of him whether it "went" with anything or not, he'd pile stuff on his fork willy-nilly and afterwards tell me or Peg or indeed any hostess what a marvellous dinner it was. And he meant it. So I stopped worrying about whether he liked Wishbone Italian Dressing running through his pancakes or not. And became, I have to say, a much happier person for it. Although of course it still pisses me off, if I let it. Which I tend to.
Another thing about Peg's eating habits, while we're on the subject, is I've noticed the older she gets, the more her table manners have deteriorated. Not that they were ever faultless to begin with. Though she brought me up to have excellent ones and in fact frequently encouraged me to dip into Emily Post and Tiffany's Table Manners For Teenagers. I notice however that she's never waited to start eating until everyone else has his plate or is seated: no, if her food's there, she's digging right in. Plus she smells every bite before it goes in. Surreptitously, of course, but you can see it if you're looking for it. And she pushes her food around her plate as if it were some artist's palette and she's trying to mix the right shade --cutting and mashing stuff and adding more butter here, salt there, moving bits into little piles, all so that she "comes out even", meaning she has to have one little bite of meat left to go with the last little bite of potatoes, the last little bite of corn, the last little bite of cranberry sauce…it's a good thing she's such a genius in the writing and acting department because I tell you. It's difficult to watch. And remain silent.
And of course, having made deviled eggs last Saturday to go with Chicken fricassee or some Italian recipe one of the guy's was making for their main course, the BIG QUESTION worth two frantic phone calls was: WHERE IS HER DEVILLED EGG SERVING DISH, the brown ceramic one that has little egg-shaped indentations around it? The answer, which I could indeed provide, being "fuck knows", because I unloaded it with a lot of other ugly crap either at the tag sale last summer, or Goodwill, but who's whereabouts I had to act equally puzzled over, suggesting search areas like the top shelf in the bar? Bottom drawer of the sideboard that sticks? And finally said if it isn't on top of the freezer in the laundry room where I last saw it then gee I don't know where it is. Sadly.
It's all the games I now have to play that are so exhausting.
And guess what, Peg has a brand new $59.00 mattress topper with waterproof covering, which she just loves. Seems the Easter Bunny, aka the UPS man had dumped it outside the front door and left, Bonnie found it waiting when she arrived.
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