What it’s like talking with my mom about movies.

It seems I’m the one with the memory in my family. Try living with two old folks in your house and you get a lot of questions like “What? What’s that you said?” and stories told again and again. Not even the good kind of stories, the kind you’d like to hear sitting in front of a roaring fire while sipping mulled cider in the dead of winter. No, the kinds of stories I hear repeatedly, even 5,000 miles away via telephone in Brazil, are these: “I saw Mr. Lumbra at the post office. He says hi. He’s getting a root canal on Thursday.” Those are the kinds of things I hear again and again. My mom always makes fun of me for repeating “I’m so tired,” all the time, but I don’t think she’s paid all that much attention to how often I say “You told me that already.”
She’s always been amazed by my memory; in fact, one of my earliest memories is her saying, “Gosh, Gina, how can you remember that?” after I’d told her something I’d remembered, some obscure detail of an outfit she wore or of something someone said on a family vacation in Tennessee.

It’s even worse when we talk about movies, and here’s why: the only actor’s name she can remember is Tom Hanks. In fact, this is SO true that I play a game with her: Name five movies that DON’T have Tom Hanks in them. There’s not even a time limit to this game and here are the ones she continually comes up with:

• Gone With the Wind
• Singin’ In the Rain
• Lassie
• Bambi

[and then a really long pause]

• Something’s Gotta Give

[she likes Helen Hunt, too. This last movie varies. Sometimes it's been "Bridge over the River Kwai," other times "Mystic Pizza." But those first four are pretty much standard. I think I play the game just to hear fifth movie because I have to wonder how the hell she thought of it.] 

In any case, we had another one of those conversations tonight via Skype. She was telling me about the movie “Mama Mia” that should be coming out at the end of June/beginning of July, in Vermont. The actors she was TRYING to remember were Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan. Here’s how it went:

Mom: Oh! There’s this fantastic movie coming out! It’s “Mama Mia!”
Gina: Isn’t that a Broadway musical?
Mom: Oh yes! But they’ve turned it into a movie!
Gina: Oh. Cool!
Mom: Yes! And let me think….who’s in it? Ohhh, wait.
[At this point, a series of groans begins, as if she is audibly trying to wring her brain for the right names.]
Mom: You know, it’s the one who….she’s blonde….and, you know her. She’s pretty and she’s blonde. You know her! The one who….GLEN CLOSE!
Gina: Oh…well, it could be…
Mom: But it’s not Glen Close. It’s the other one. She sings! And she’s blonde and pretty…You know….She was in….oh, what’s the name of that movie? You know…she’s…..um….
Gina: Meryl Streep?
Mom: YES!! Meryl Streep! And who else…? Um, ah, wait a second….the guy Double O Seven. That guy. There was that guy, right?
Gina: There were a lot of those guys. James Bond?
Mom: Yes. James Bond. But wait, he was the one who…ahhh…uhhh, the one who…
Gina: Sean Connery?
Mom: YES! Sean Connery!
Gina: Sean Connery’s in the movie?
Mom: But not him. No, the other one. The other Double O Seven guy…..Tom Hanks!
Gina: Oh no.
Mom: I was kidding. Lighten up….But you know. Oh, help me! What’s his name? Uhhh…
[This goes on for several seconds and at last, it appears she's wrung out the right names:]
Pierce Brosnan Brosnan Pierce!
Gina: Pierce Brosnan.
Mom: And there’s so many others!
Gina: We don’t have to figure them out. Two’s enough tonight. You can rest now.

She lets out an exhausted sigh as if she’s thrown herself across a finish line of sorts and appears to collapse, fully spent from remembering names.

It’s not like things are getting worse. This is how they’ve always been, since the beginning of time. She can remember numbers like they’re the keys to breath, but when it comes to names—-even MINE—-she’s hopeless. Trust me. I’ve been called the following: “Tico,” “Murphy,” “Kellie,” “Henry,” “Eliza,” “Frank,” and “Toni.” Those are the names her siblings and niece and nephew, her husband, and two dogs. (I dare you to guess who’s who.) I am her only child. I think that’s why she gave me so many nicknames because it was just easier than remembering my name. But go figure, I respond just as readily to my nicknames than to my real name and in fact, when Dennis calls me “Gina” I think he’s mad at me. 

 

My mom also told me not to write that conversation, but my writing does no justice to how it is in real life, so it’s not like I wrote it well or even accurately. There’s really much more anguish on her part, and much more laughing on mine. But I know she’s laughing now reading this, so you can just go ahead and take that, Mother. Ah, the pen: so much mightier than the memory.

Timeline: Six through Ten.

I wake up, seven years old, with a loopy, jumping feeling in my heart. It is early morning on a school day and I pad to my parents’ room, walk to my mother’s side of the bed, and tell her my heart feels weird. I lie down between my mom and dad in their wide blue-flower-sheeted bed and she places her hand on my chest. Through the fabric of my nightgown she feels an extra jump, an extra squeeze of my heart and she calls the doctor. I spend the morning in the hospital with my father while doctors monitor my heart’s beating and I am later released with white suction cups attached to my chest and a little monitor in a green backpack that I have to wear all day long when I go back to school. The doctor tells me that the suction cups on my chest are there to listen closely to my heart and that if ever I feel the same sensation I had that morning, that same loopy jump, I need only to press hard on one of those suction cups so that the monitor in the green backpack will begin to record what’s going on with my heart. “But whatever you do,” the doctor continues, “don’t press on it unless you feel that sensation.” This kind of statement is a verbal pandora’s box because pressing on the suction cups is exactly what I spend the next twenty-four hours doing, just to see what might happen. You cannot tell a seven year-old not to do something because even if she’s the most well-behaved only child who ever lived, her curiosity about what not to do overrides her good behavior at the drop of a hat. It turns out nothing was wrong with my heart at all, just an extra beat. Like my heart wanted to step outside of its normal routine.

My obsession in those years was with Laura Ingalls Wilder and her novels about growing up with Pa, Ma, and Mary. I watched the television show when I could, not having cable television until well into my middle school years, and took every opportunity to daydream about what it would have been like to be her living on the prairie out West. When I had friends over, we performed scenes from the way we imagined her life to be for my parents who took turns sitting on the couch watching us improvise our “lines.” I distinctly remember one of them asking us if our performance was over and although we probably answered “yes,” I’m sure it never really ended. There are days even now I find myself wondering about what I would do if I were Laura living on the prairie in the freezing cold winter, fearing for my crops and whether or not I’d be able to come up with a good enough Christmas present for Ma.

Mrs. Davis was my teacher who introduced me to Laura Ingalls Wilder. She was a large lady, the largest I’d ever seen, and the moments were few and far between that I saw her on both feet. Most of the time she sat at the front of the room and managed to scold us with her voice, so raspy in her more angry moments that it seemed it could scrape the freckles off your face and in those moments we knew to hush up. Mrs. Davis was a Vermonter through and through, one of those old, small town farm girls who carried the scent of pastures in her hair and wouldn’t deny for a second her love of farm animals and dogs. She had a daughter named Winifred, a charmingly old fashioned name, and who she always referred to as Winnie. I imagined Winnie a scrappy little girl with twin brown braids tied with red ribbon, but she was really much older than my imagination and when I finally met her I was disappointed that she couldn’t be my friend. Mrs. Davis gave us old fashioned peppermint sticks for Christmas. She kept them in a jar on her desk and when we won the game of “Beat the Teacher” in math, that was the prize. I never won one for math, but I sure tried hard. I believe I’ve never tried as hard as I did in all of my experience with math, not even on the SATs, as I did in Mrs. Davis’s class that year. After that, none of my other math teachers had the real, old fashioned, peppermint sticks at Christmastime. Only those dumb candy canes. I knew all along Mrs. Davis was the real deal. It was she who taught me how it was possible to love language so much, to love accents, to love imagining scenes in books. There’s not a day that goes by, not a book I open, that I don’t give small thanks to Mrs. Davis. She died when I was in college and I wrote to Winnie telling her that it was because of Mrs. Davis that I had become who I was. I loved Mrs. Davis with all of my third-grader heart and there is still a large portion of it that belongs to her.

In my desire to be like Laura Ingalls Wilder, I asked my father to build me a playhouse. I’d drawn up images of a little house with gingerbread details. I’d pictured a dark blue house, two floors, with windows of real glass and a sloping roof because of the snow. When I think back on it now, the image I’d drawn was rather Victorian and it would have taken a whole crew of engineers and contractors to build what I’d imagined. Thinking my father was the equivalent of that team of professionals, I was pretty shocked when he presented me with five giant pieces of plywood and said, “Here it is!” What we ended up with was a dirt-floored, two cut-out windowed shack whose roof bowed and buckled over time with the weight of a decade of snows and springs and summer downpours. We’d found some leftover paint the same color as our house and with that I painted what I could of the plywood, leaving sixty percent of it unpainted with promises to my mother, summer after summer, that yes, I would paint it. But its unfinished, rough nature became something I loved and after a while I’d decorated it with my parents’ rusty lawn furniture, old citronella candles, and the white aluminum mailbox that had been destroyed in a redneck’s summer night fun of taking a baseball bat to all the mailboxes on our road. At the time, I’d wanted so badly to be like my dad, to join the Vermont National Guard because of the MREs he’d bring home from weekend trainings, to be a carpenter because I liked standing in his basement woodshop inhaling the scent of pipe smoke and sawdust while listening to Count Basie or Glen Miller on the oldies AM station. When I could, I dressed up in his camouflage and had him run me through marching drills. And when we were together we futzed around downstairs in the basement workshop, him working on building birdfeeders at his bench and me on my sanding projects at the little bench he’d built for me. I loved the weight of the red iron clamps he bought for me, how the hammer fit perfectly into my hands, how he explained how to use each tool and put his dry hands over mine and to guide my movements with the little saw. He set me up with all the tools he thought I’d ever need and I’ve used each one of them, whether they were in my workbench or not.

But of all this time, the most important was my mother’s stories of Camp Arcadia. It was where she went to camp when she was a little girl until she was at the end of her teenage years. It was in Maine and both she and my aunt spent their childhood summers there. As a result, I grew up with the most magical stories of life at Camp Arcadia. On long car rides down to the Carolinas in the summer, my mother would regale me with stories about Peanut Island and canoeing on Lake Pleasant. Somehow she’d make it so that my stuffed animals were campers at Camp Arcadia and she told me of their adventures over the summer. I listened with bated breath, with wonder about what this little magical world called Camp was all about. On days when I was sick, my mother would rub my back and tell me those stories and I would temporarily suspend my attention to my sickness while my Care Bear and my doll named Baby canoed from Camp to Casco, or as they stayed awake in a nighttime downpour and needed to figure out a way to start a fire. I cannot remember a time when I was young that a story of Camp Arcadia did not thrill me beyond words and the tears I cried were very real when I learned, on Christmas morning of my fifth grade year, that in the coming June I would be going there myself. I shook with excitement for hours afterwards. I think in all my years it is the only present I ever wanted so much, so thoroughly, without even knowing until it sat there in my hands: a little notecard in a giant box, written neatly in calligraphy “This summer you are going to Camp Arcadia!”
Oh, how those tears rolled down my cheeks: the first time I remember crying with happiness.

Tudo de bom.

Tudo de bom is a phrase here that means something like, “It’s all good.” And today, it is. 

I woke up early and walked to the hippie fair to purchase goodies for the winners of my mom’s blog contest. (And let me tell you, you are some lucky, lucky people. I found some beautiful things!!!) I had myself a little breakfast in the cafe near the hippie fair, graded some papers, and then walked home. On my way I fed the cats and later saw some friends. Today is Mother’s Day, of course, and my own mother is out galavanting with her friends at a Mother’s Day breakfast. I sent her a beautiful orchid for this holiday and apparently it’s sitting pretty in our living room.

 

The other night was a karaoke birthday party and it was surprisingly fantastic. I dreaded going but was surprised by how seriously the singers were about performing karaoke, and so I decided to give it a go. With my friend. We chose “Wild World” by Cat Stevens and after three or four seconds up there, realized it was much too low for us, and so we giggled our way through the rest of the song. I had the thought to go up and try it again, but was much happier dancing and singing along with the other songs I knew rather than taking the stage. I do have pictures of me singing, but here’s the problem: When you sing “Wild World,” even those two words, your mouth is open in weird shapes. Here’s the chorus: “Oooooh, baaaby, baby, it’s a wiiiiiillld wooooorrrrrrrrld/ it’s hard to get byyyyyy just upon a smiiiiiiiiiille/ Oooooh, baaaaby, baby it’s a wiiiiiillld wooooorrrrld / and I’ll always remember youuuu like a chiiiiiillllld, girl.”  So imagine the shutter snapping closed just at those times when my mouth was wide open belting out some of those vowels. It was not pretty, neither the sound nor the photos, so if I can gather the strength and willingness to laugh at myself, I’ll post them up for your laughing pleasure. But the party was fabulous, the company full of joy, and in general, this weekend has been one of the best in a very long time.

Tudo de bom for sure.

 

Karaoke calls.

I’m off for a few hours of mildly horrifically embarrassing karaoke. It’s my friend’s birthday and she planned a karaoke party as some kind of “fun.” Party = fun. Karaoke = torture.

 

HOWEVER, I will say that two nights ago I did warm up the old vocal chords, just in case I am tempted to prove my friends wrong who say I have no balls. The last time I did karaoke (rather, the last time I can soberly remember) was when I was fifteen and on a cruise with my friend’s family in the Caribbean. I sang “Hello, Dolly” in front of a ton of Italians in their mid-thirties and rocked the house so poorly it took ten years and a lot of beer to get me comfortable to do it one more time. That time my buddy Jay (the one who came down here to visit a few weeks ago) got me properly plastered with his sailor friends up in Massachusetts after a schooner race and I think together we sang “Brown Eyed Girl.” The song was better than my previous attempt, though the voice I’m not so sure.

But I’ll report back, and if you’re lucky (and I’m crazy) I’ll even have a few pictures. 

 

“All is well in brainland.”

The subject is a line taken from an email my mom sent me today after she received the results of her MRI, revealing no metastasis to her brainal parts. This, of course, is good news, great news, fabulous news, and we are all kind of woozy from the nerves coming crashing down, like they’ve been at a rave all night and then shotgunned a pot of coffee laced with thirty-seven packets of Splenda. We’re kind of feeling like that tonight, so you’ll excuse any typos, please, because I can’t even spell my name let alone give two hoots about punctuation.

(That “two hoot” thing is from my mom. It’s her polite way of saying “I don’t give a shit,” which is my way of saying “two hoots.”)  

I’m here with a few celebratory Hershey Kisses and I’ve polished off the string cheese, so it looks like I’m in for the night with plenty of nothing to do. But that’s fine with me because if all is well in brainland then all is well on the orange couch here in Brazil. 

Oh, one thing, though? I’m over there on indiebloggers.org. My “Earthquake” post was published today and so now you can see it in a different place. 

I’d really love to have something better for you, but brainland trumps all of the good things in the world. 

 

 

A note to subscribers…

(Just quickly: those of you who have subscribed by email to this blog, don’t forget to click on the “activate subscription” link in the email that is send automatically to you, otherwise you won’t get the updates! Cheers!!)

 

A visit from Dr. Self.

I am sitting on the orange couch, nibbling a string cheese. Self pokes her head in through the doorway from the kitchen.

Self: Hey there.
Me: Hiya.
Self: So. [pause] How’s it going?
Me: Well…?
Self: Yeah. I know. [long pause while she watches me type.] Whatcha doin’?
Me: This. Typing. Eating cheese.
Self: I thought you were going to yoga tonight.
Me: Me too. I forgot my clothes.
Self: Yeah, I saw that. You dropped them on the floor right before you walked out the door this morning. What was that all about?
Me: I have absolutely no recollection of that. None whatsoever. [pause] Why didn’t you say something?
Self: I don’t know. I thought you knew what you were doing.
Me: Clearly not. Do you realize I packed my black shoes in the bag and wore my boots to school? Not that that’s news or anything, but I didn’t even realize I was wearing my boots until after lunch today. What is going on with me?
Self: You’re elsewhere.
Me: No kidding I’m elsewhere. I’m on another planet altogether.
Self: Which planet is that?
Me: Planet Whatthefuck.
Self: [chuckling] Oh yeah? What goes on there?
Me: I have no idea. That’s what the planet’s all about. No one has any idea what’s going on.
Self: Sounds a little like Earth, my friend.
Me: Hm. Maybe.
[long pause]
Self: So. You okay?
Me: [pause.] Well, what should I say? All the cliched things that ever existed: “I could be better.” “I’ve seen better days.” “Fine.” “Life’s a bitch.” “It all happens for a reason.” “God’s got a plan.” “Think positively.” Fuck all those things actually. Right now I feel a little like throwing up, a lot like going to sleep, and half like eating a bunch of Hershey Kisses and curling up with a book for eleven days in a row.
Self: Sounds like depression.
Me: No! It’s not! It’s being in a place—both physically and emotionally—where I can’t DO anything. It’s not having any control, it’s being far away from my mom who is my entire world and not being able to stop any of the shit that is going on inside of her and not being able to do anything that has any kind of result at all. That’s what it is.
Self: Yeah, but…
Me: No. No “but.” I am perfectly entitled to feel this way. I am absolutely able to feel the way I feel and lash out when I want to lash out and not talk when I don’t want to talk. I have every right to cry whenever I feel like it and I have every right to say what I want to say and not say what I don’t want to say.
Self: But wait. Please.
Me: What.
Self: [gently] You know this isn’t about you. This time it’s not about you.
Me: [choking up.] I know that too.
Self: And that makes it harder. If it were about you, you’d probably be okay with feeling however you wanted and not be worried about defending your feelings like you just did.
Me: …
Self: And you feel you have to somehow find strength in you. And you don’t know if it’s there.
Me: [sobbing now]
Self: It’s there, Gina. It’s there. You have to find it and you will. You don’t have a choice in this matter. As much as you need your mom, your mom needs you more.
Me: But I don’t know how!
Self: No one knows how. You’ll find a way. You have amazing support from other people!
Me: But that’s not fair to put on them.
Self: First, stop. You’re not dealing with this alone because what we’re here on this planet to do is to care for one another. You care for your mom, and others care for you. It’s called Humanity and you’ve got to believe in it for once. Second, breathe.
Me: [breathing]
Self: Breathe deeper. Take another breath. A big breath.
Me: Mom says that all the time.
Self: Well, she’s right.
Me: I know. [rolling eyes] She’s always right. [breathing again, calming down.]
Self: Better?
Me: For now I guess.
Self: You mentioned Hershey Kisses earlier.
Me: Yeah, they’re right there. [Pointing to a half-eaten bag on the couch.]
Self: Jesus, Gina. Half the bag? You just got these last weekend.
Me: [grinning] So it’s been a rough week.
Self: It’s gonna be a rougher bathing suit season if you keep this up.
Me: Ah, so sue me.
Self: I just might if you sit on me by chance in the next few weeks.
Me: Okay, okay. Enough out of you.
Self: Seriously. You’re so lucky they don’t sell these things in Brazil otherwise you’d have to check your ass as extra baggage on the flight home. Airlines are charging even more these days for that kind of weight.
Me: No, really. I’m feeling much better. You can cut it with your humor.
Self: You’re sure? Because I could go on. I’m on a roll.
Me: Nah, really. I’m fine. Thanks.
Self: Okay! Just let me know if you need some more laughs. I’m full of ‘em.
Me: Sure. [pause, glancing at Self] And thanks. I mean it. You’re not so bad sometimes.
Self: Aw, shucks, kid. I didn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know.

Pumpkin, anyone?

So I’m sure by now your eyes have been smacked by the gigantic pumpkin to the right. Great, no? Cutest thing ever, no? Nate did an amazing job and I’m so excited to have this bright shiny link to my mom’s site.

If you’ve got a blog and would like this cute little pumpkin on your site, hit me up and I’ll pass the code onto you. It’d be great to have a little pumpkin love spread over the Internet.