The Home

Mom is ninety seven years old. I've known her for almost seventy years. Okay, maybe I've known her, but I didn't catch on to her until I was an adult. I look at her and realize that if I live to be ninety seven, that is pretty much what I will be. Bad knees, bad feet, hard of hearing, and kind of cranky at times. I actually have the cranky down already. So Mom gave up driving seven years ago, lost my dad nineteen years ago, and about a year and a half ago lost her right to live all by herself in her own house. We had to hire a lady to come and live with her because Mom fell and couldn't get up one night. Since that first 'lady friend', Mom has gone through eleven of them. They come and go. Some have been wonderful and others, not so good. They have left for various reasons, I think one reason is that Mom gaslights the ones she doesn't like. She likes the helper ladies who let her do whatever the hell she wants, and makes faces and little verbal jabs about the ladies who are too strict. So we've reached the point where we think Mom should be living in a more... ummm... structured environment. Not an old folks home, but kind of an old folks home. A place where old folks can be watched over. Oh, okay. An old folks home. We're considering a place not far from where she lives now. She'll have her own apartment with a kitchen and the freedom to come and go, as long as she doesn't wander off grounds. Just outside her door will be a nurse. The place has a restaurant where she can go hangout, a theater, outdoor garden, and game room. We took her there for a visit so she could get a look at what it was like. Mom was very quiet on that visit. It seems that she does not want to live in an 'Old people's home'. She doesn't want to live with those old people. What Mom wants is to live with one of her children. She has told me so. So I went down the line.

"Do you want to live in Florida with Dave?"

"Oh no. That's so far away."

"Okay, what about Peggy?"

Mom made a face.

"Rick smokes cigars. My dad smoked cigars. I never liked it."

I continued down the line. Alaska? No. In a high rise downtown? No.

And on and on, I went through all my brothers and sisters. Then it got quiet for a moment.

"I had a dream last night."

"A good dream?" I asked.

"No. It was a crappy dream."

"Crappy? How?"

"I had another dream."

So I wasn't going to hear about the crappy dream.

"I dreamed I went to live with you and Mark."

There was a long pause. Mom had a little smile on her face. 

Seduced

I watched The Graduate again last night. I'm not sure how many times I've seen that movie, maybe fifty, maybe a hundred times. I just love that movie. Besides being a great story, I love the soundtrack. Everybody loves the soundtrack. Simon and Garfunkel at their best. In fact I'm listening to the soundtrack recording as I write this. I first saw The Graduate in 1967 with my girlfriend, Bonnie. We were on a double date with my friend Dave and his girlfriend. Being about ninety nine percent sure I was a homosexual, I still plodded onward dating girls. I figured that until I actually tried out a girl I wouldn't be able to get past that last one percent. So every weekend Dave, his girlfriend, my girlfriend Bonnie, and I, would double date. Dinner, a movie, and then necking in a forest preserve parking lot. I never got beyond kissing with some tongue. Meanwhile, in the back seat, Dave and his girl seemed to be enmeshed in much more. Poor Bonnie, she must have been mighty frustrated. I never, ever made a move past kissing. Oh, I fumbled with her bra clasp once, but gave up over the complexities of unhooking that thing. After all, there was nothing in there that I wanted.

So I watched the Graduate again. Each and every time I see that movie I notice some little thing that I hadn't noticed before. With the passage of time the movie becomes more and more a period piece. This viewing I noticed the pay phones were all dial type, not touch tone. Yes, pay phones. And I caught one line clearly this viewing that I never seemed to notice before. One of the graduation party attendees comes up to Ben and his father and comments on Ben's new Alfa Romeo. "Is that your new car out there Ben, the little red wop job?"  Written and filmed fifty years before the 'Me Too' movement, there was no problem showing Mrs. Robinson seducing Ben. She's the wife of Mr. Robinson, the business partner of Ben's father. A woman supposedly twice his age with some power over him. Although, she is punished in the end. The film is also not bothered by the fact that Ben turns into a stalker, following Elaine to school and later invading her wedding. In fact we cheer him on. I Don't know why I latched onto such a heterocentric movie, why I love it so much. But I do. I guess Mrs. Robinson seduced me.

The Chase

Grandma and Little Alan

I was looking through some of the photos I've scanned over the last couple of years and came across this one of me and my dad's mom. So many great memories of her. Like the candy dish on her coffee table. We were allotted one piece of candy from that dish every time we visited. We couldn't just grab one. We had to wait until Grandma actually offered it to us, which insured our good behavior for most of the visit. And then there was her 'strudel'. She called it strudel, but I'm not sure that is exactly what it was. Sort of a loaf of bread with some kind of sweet stuff swirled through it. Maybe almond paste? Anyway, it was very good. One memory that is seared into my mind is the day my dad got pissed at me, and believe me he had many a reason to get pissed at me. That day when my dad came after me with the belt I ran out of the front door and down the street. Usually Dad would eventually catch me. This time however, my Grandma was at our house on one of her Sunday visits. To this day I still can hear her running out of the door, screaming after her eldest son, "Ahlex" (she was Austrian just like Arnold Schwarzenegger) "Ahlex don’t you touch that boy!". With those words she became my heroine forever. My dad listened to his mother and gave up chasing me that day, she having more power over him than me. So I lived to irritate him again.

Artist's rendering of the chase.

Discipline

The balloon man. He used to be everywhere when I was a kid. At the carnival, the circus, and sometimes just walking down the street when Mom and Dad would take us downtown. What kid wouldn't want one of those big colorful orbs, so much bigger than the ones you would have at a birthday party. It was after numerous encounters with this purveyor of evil that I finally caught on. Those balloons were not for the kids. He was selling to Mom.

It was one fateful day at the zoo. Mom and Dad had taken us for our annual visit to see the animals, and there among the wafting odor of monkey shit was the balloon man.

"Does anybody want a balloon?" Asked my mom in her most pleasant voice.

I looked at that man and his balloons, all bunched up, each one tethered to a thin, willowy stick. I did not see the balloons. I saw those sticks.

"No." Was my simple reply.

"Are you sure?"

I don't remember if any of my siblings piped up and said they wanted one, but I didn't. Because by noon the next day that balloon would be wilted and drooping in its death throes. Mom would announce that the balloon was ready for the trash and dispose of it, keeping that thin, willowy stick. She would store it away in the kitchen pantry, pulling it out only for the occasion of disciplining her children. So yes, sweet Lila used a switch on her children. A switch supplied by that innocent looking balloon man. But that's not the guy I really held a grudge for. That would be the man who sold my dad his belts. I can still vividly see him running down the stairs after me, skillfully ripping his belt from his pant belt loops as he cursed and yelled for me to stop running or I was "really going to get it."

Sad News

We've all wondered what the hell happened to Alicia and Alexis. Well sad news, they're missing and possibly dead. They were last seen in Texas with a hot looking young hitchhiker who says they gave him a ride. He says that they plan to go out in a blaze of glory. I knew I shouldn't have left that copy of Thelma and Louise where those drunken old broads would find it. We all know their penchant for recreating old movies. Anyway, police all along old Route 66 are on the lookout for them. Last I heard, police in Arizona think they saw a blue Thunderbird headed for the Grand Canyon. Always a good side to everything. I've cleared up more room in my office closet now by dumping their old clothes in the alley.

They've been all over the television news here in Chicago.

Memories (Can you hear Barbra singing?)

Mary Sheehan Theisen. Watched Chicago burn.

I'm cleaning out the office closet, and I started going through one little filing cabinet that has three drawers. One drawer was where I kept old receipts for past income taxes. I threw that all away. If they want to come after me, fine. Can't get blood from a stone. The second drawer is taking much longer. In that drawer I kept old correspondence. Letters from family and friends, things my mom would send me every week. This is going back thirty years while I lived in Florida. I kept every letter and card that was sent to me, with a noticeable drop off around the time email became popular. I have thrown about ninety five percent of that stuff away. I haven't looked at it in the years since it was mailed to me, and I know that when I die it will all be tossed into a giant dumpster that the family will have out front. That's what happens to all that stuff you hang on to, the dumpster. Because nobody cares about it but you. One thing I have kept is the letter my mom sent me after visiting in 2002, two years after my dad died. I know she was still grieving, but she took the time to take photographs of Mark and me, and mail copies to me. That's what I am going to keep, the few letters that contain vital information about our family. Letters written not that long ago, but before Mom's memory started getting a little sketchy. There is one short note where Mom tells me about her grandmother, my great grandmother, and how she was twelve years old when the Great Chicago fire happened. I sure would have loved to ask Mary Sheehan about that. So that's what I'm doing this weekend. I'm looking at the rest of this crap in the filing cabinet and the crap still in my closet. I just wonder why the hell did I pay movers six thousand dollars to schlep it all the way up from Florida? Seeing as how in the three years I have lived here I haven't looked at or used one thing in that closet.

Passive Aggressive Lawn Care

When I first saw the house we live in, it was April. I paid no attention to the two flat next door, north of us. Like I said, it was April and the yards were still in hibernation from the winter. Everybody's yard looked about the same. In fact it snowed again between the time we first looked at the house and the time we closed on it. It wasn't until summer that I realized the guy next door did not mow his lawn, ever. Didn't seem to care that weeds were popping up between the stairs on his porch and were growing as big as large saplings. By late June, while my yard looked neat and well tended, his yard had become a mini jungle. So I mowed it. I continued to mow it all that summer, and the next summer, and the next. I just couldn't allow that mess to be growing next to my yard. And then this spring two brothers bought that property, the bank having foreclosed on my previous neighbor. Their plan is to rehab the place and flip it. I have no problem with that. It could only improve things, and I thought surely they would keep that yard trimmed and mowed. Don't get me wrong, they are both very nice boys, but they aren't mowing the lawn. So for the first two months of this summer I mowed my lawn right up to theirs, leaving a clean line of mowed grass up against their jungle of weeds. I thought they'd get the point. They didn't. So two weeks ago I mowed it all down. The next week I mowed my grass again, leaving a clean line where my grass met their now growing grass. Sort of a passive aggressive message to them. They didn't get the message. Yesterday I mowed my lawn again, leaving the sharp contrast between my neat and trimmed yard up against their three weeks growth of grass and weeds. When I was all done, I stood on my side and looked it all over. Beautiful, my yard looked fine. Then I looked over to my new neighbor's yard. It was a mess, an ugly weedy mess. I couldn't stand it. So I started up my lawnmower and I cut it all down. Like I said, the brothers who bought the place next door are nice boys. But not that nice. Not one word of thanks for my mowing their lawn all summer. Not a goddamned peep.