Here are some less odious thoughts of the weekend:
I took my mother out to a friend's house, and she was a big hit, as always. And as my mother told stories about me, I got the regular question: "Wait - so what is your name?"
My first name is not really "Sweet Perfusion"; it is "Old Lady". Actually my full English name is "Old Lady Sweet Perfusion Aurora (Insert LastName Here)". Whenever I go to the bank or whatever, they ask "This check is made out to Sweet Perfusion, but your i.d. says Old Lady. Who is Sweet Perfusion?"
"That's me, Old Lady S.P. A." I reply, "Look at the signature,you see, it says Old Lady Sweet Perfusion." This doesn't bother me too much anymore, except that I always end up using that poor grammar. But the more annoying question is "You never wanted to go by Old Lady?" Well, I had very little to do with it. My mother, who gave me all my names, called me by the middle name, so that is who I am. I did try a couple times to get people to call me by my 1st or 3rd name, but it never stuck. (My Hebrew name is a worse problem, because I have two naming documents, neither of which is exactly what I was called in school, but that wasn't really my mother's doing.)
But here's the kicker - my mother doesn't actually call me "Sweet Profusion", more like Sweepee, so that you would think my name is Sweet Pea, which is a perfectly good name, in fact my cousin's perfectly good name, but not really MY name.
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My mother is looking old, really old, really old crone caricature old. She used to be gorgeous - you can see in photos that although she may not have been a "classic beauty", she had such a powerful personality and charm, she was just a knock-out. And in the photos of her pregnancy, she is just stunning. But motherhood must have taken a lot out of her. Then, not too far in, she became a single parent, basically alone in the world.
And I know it is awful, but I am damn scared of becoming this same woman. The outward appearance is a small part of my specter of the future (as I said, this post is of the LESS odious thoughts), far from main characteristics I am desperate to avoid , probably because I was never stunning. But still, the change is drastic, and unnerving, and sad.
Mom wanted to tell me, again, where all her stuff is hidden in her apartment. I finally told her it is less important to tell me where she has stashed petty cash, and more important to send me copies of insurance or bank statements of holdings, as well as the name of the cemetery where she wants to be buried. Mainly she has just explained to me why she doesn't want to be buried in my father's hometown. I guess she thinks I disapprove or feel hurt. Really, it just makes me nervous, because I don't know anything about her hometown, so I would like to have as much DETAIL as she can give. "Do you want me to buy a plot now?"
"Hey, no, don't go buying me a cemetery plot before I am dead!"
"Well, what if there are no spaces left? Do you still want to be in your hometown?" etc.
Then she tells me again about stuff around the apartment, what stuff of mine she has kept, and I respond way to bluntly, that I just mean to get a cleaning service to dump everything and burn it for all I care. (Let me soften that by saying that she, like the wasband, has spent the last 20 years giving me stuff to store. Pretty much everything that has value to her, including photos, baby-clothes, 2nd-grade report cards, has already come to me. So we both know 99% of what she has now is not of any special significance.) And she shoots right back with, "Yeah, I don't care what you do with it."
But damn if that isn't scary, in a completely narcissist kind of way: she will be buried in her hometown, and at least the people she knows now, the people from her senior center, maybe a neighbor or two, maycome to the funeral, and she has a connection to her family who died and were buried there. But where would I be buried???? I haven't a clue. I guess where ever my kids want, to make it easier for them, because I have no connections, no one I really want to be buried next to.
Man, sounds much more morbid and self-pitying then I intended - really, it was just a thought I had, and, again, not a terribly odious one - no name, no hometown, no connections. My friend even said it this weekend - jokingly - that if I ever wanted to start a new identity, I would have a good head-start. But hers is not a new thought to me - I already touched on this in a couple recent posts.
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Things from the good side from this weekend:
- Serendipitously ended up at a free performance at a local museum, by a very nice Latino string-quartet. I never knew there was a museum there, or that they had regular musical guests on Sundays.
- Used my mother's "birthday money" on some fun stuff. Bought more beads, beads, beads. And bought some nice yarn.
- The Wasband actually poked his head into my apartment (literally) to wish my mother "good shabbos", when he dropped off the kids for lunch. Getting closer to "menchlichtkeit" then in years and years.
- My oldest son was of a generally good humor at the shabbos table.
So, it was okay. It was not good. I could still use an actually "happy birthday" feeling or two. But I'm through it for this year with few scars, and most of my hair.
