Spending time with my mother makes me feel 14 again.
I had some rage issues this weekend that I successfully kept under my hat. Ed fortunately understood that I was mere seconds from an epic tantrum, and let me sit in the blessed quiet for almost an hour before conversation started again. It wasn’t that I was feeling anti-social or moody at all; I just needed quiet. My ears hurt from all the talking – my mother, she won’t shut up. She’s one of those people who either love the sound of their own voice, or can’t stand empty spaces – she talks. A lot. She fills every single second with chatter and stories and nonsensical rambling. If someone else says something, she repeats it back to you as though it were her thought in the first place and isn’t she clever. She’s my mom, so I have to love her, but good lord. It doesn’t help that a) she repeats herself – we heard the same stories multiple times, whether she was re-telling them to us or telling them to perfect strangers and we were trapped within earshot – and b) she talks in the third person.
I’m absolutely not kidding about this. My mother talks solely in the third person. I don’t know if she does this at work or with her friends, but with me she only talks in the third person and refers to herself as “mummy”. She’s always done it, but my skin was extremely thin this weekend and it grated on my every nerve. It’s WEIRD. Why does she do it. She should stop.
This weekend was very, very trying. We didn’t even make it to Victoria on Friday night – now that summer has started, every person on the mainland was trying their damnedest to get to the island, causing accidents and traffic woes along the way. We made it about a third of the way there when according to the traffic station, there were three accidents and a tunnel blockage in our way – not to mention that the ferry we hoped to get on was already 90% full. We called mom to tell her we wouldn’t arrive until Saturday morning, then turned around and made our way back to the north shore. We actually had a very enjoyable evening with the Crew, talking everyone into buying scooters. It worked – Josh now has a scooter, making three down and three to go – but more on that later.
We helped my mom at lot this weekend, taking over carloads of things to her new place. We also got her to buy a brand new fancy bed to replace the 30 year old monstrosity she had been sleeping on. Her new place is .. okay. It’s not what I envisioned my mom in, but she seems to like it and it’s certainly close enough to her favoured haunts, so it’ll do.
The weekend had one high and two very low lows. Low the first: my mother telling me she’ll give me some of the house money if I agree to lose 40 pounds. You know, I really don’t know why being at home again makes me feel like a teenager – it’s the strangest thing! I shrugged off the rather idiotic request, but Ed was really upset by it, taking my mom to task when I wasn’t around. I mean, the entire thing stung – but even now, I’m so used to the little nasties from her that I shrug them off and write bad poetry in my head. Some things will apparently never change, I guess.
Low the second: it took us over seven hours to get home. We left mom at 2:30, deciding to take the Nanaimo ferry back because the terminal is about 15 minutes from our house, as opposed to the Sidney-Vancouver ferry, which is over an hour from our place. We got to the terminal just after 4pm, thinking that we could get on the 5 and be home by 7. OHO! It was not to be. The 5pm was stupidly full, and there was no 6 – so we were on the 7pm ferry, which by then was running about 40 minutes late. We got home at 10pm, after leaving Victoria at 2:30. It sucked. Luckily, we were among the very first cars on the ferry so as soon as we parked we bolted upstairs to beat the cafeteria rush. Beat it we did; we were the first people to order food which was frankly delicious, since we were hungry when we arrived at the terminal over three hours earlier. Longest ride home ever.
So, the high? After being missing for almost 20 years, my box of Transformers cards, stickers, tech-specs, random weaponry, and miscellaneous notes written by my 12-year-old hand reappeared. I stashed the box away many years ago after mom went on one of her rampages – I hid the box so she wouldn’t find it and throw it out. Well, I hid it a little too well, and I never saw the box again. Every time I went home I would take a look around for it, but never had much luck. Once the mass pre-move purge started and my stuff still didn’t show up, I gave up almost all hope of ever finding it again. And then .. it was found! My mom’s been paying a couple of neighbourhood kids to help her haul crap out of the garage and basement, and one of them found my box of Transformers stuff. They wanted to sell it all, but mom swooped in and saved them for me. I have my Transformers junk again! It was really fucking weird to go through it all; my cards and stickers and notepads and more. I was beyond amused to see my notes that included the movie release date (August 8th 1986), the dates I saw it in the theatre (starting August 9th 1986), the number of times I saw the comercial [sic] on TV (41), how many times I rented the movie once it came out on video (four), and even a ticket stub for one of the times I saw it (child price in 1986: $2.50). I was evidently extremely anal retentive, even as a Transformers-obsessed 12 year old. Still missing are the notebooks in which I kept track of every episode I watched – the date, the episode, the mistakes in the episode and the repeats – but I’m okay if those don’t show up. After all, I have stickers and cards to keep me busy. This rediscovery might even get me through the overwhelming apprehension I feel towards the new movie!
I am glad to be home.
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