How Not To Welcome Your Daughter Home

18, July 2013

THE MOM:

I sit here in Massachusetts sweating in 95 degree heat and humidity waiting for the woman who loaned my mother a seven-year-old collie dog last April to arrive to take the dog back, because the dog for the last month has been relieving itself all over the downstairs and my mother has not been reprimanding it, she has been cuddling and kissing it, so of course it continues to relieve itself on the porch rug, and the dining room one, and the kitchen ones, and what’s more, is teaching the other collie dog to do the same. The whole place reeks. The first thing Alex and I did upon arrival was to get the windows open and the screens in.

Four days later:

The next thing we did was to unload the rental car, which was not only full of suitcases and golf clubs, but a three course dinner for 12, which I had spent the day before—in other words my first day in the States after arriving in Connecticut at midnight the night before—cooking, because my mother was giving Alex and me a “Welcome Home!” party. This has happened before. How it works is she invites a lot of people she wants to see, most of whom I don’t know, and I get to do all the work.

So we get here to find the kitchen and dining room not only reeking but the counters piled high, stuff everywhere, the house not looking remotely like a party’s happening in two hours. Stacks of magazines, socks, fly swatters, dog food, clothes, Fixodent, dead boxes of Entemann’s coffee cake, Norwegian hunting tankards that belong in the den, coupons from Price Chopper, a fish-shaped smoked salmon serving platter that belongs on the wall, silver vegetable bowls that belong in attic, an electric hot tray for keeping food warm (on the hottest day of the year), so next thing is I’m having to shovel out the place plus get the food sorted for this fun party I didn’t ask for, then race around with Lysol Room Deodorizer and light scented candles which normally make me gag, and I’ve just gotten upstairs to collapse at 5:00pm thinking oh thank Christ, I can have a good 45 minutes of jet lag moment on the bed, when the doorbell goes, seems the first guests have arrived. My mother had told them 5:00, not 6:00.

By today, the downstairs is at least habitable without retching, which is good because over the next week we have a million people coming from all over, most of them to interview and video my mother about her illustrious career in radio and TV. I’ve had the remaining dog shampooed, got Servicemaster carpet cleaners out here, and took three rugs to the dump, after cutting one up (with gloves on) in order to get it out from under the grand piano.

My parents do not notice any bad odour whatsoever and resent being told the house smells. My father had not had a shower since April, by my reckoning, so this had to be arranged, nor had he had his hair cut, and for some reason had shaved only the left side of his face, the right was just one long mutton chop. My mother has had a catheter for a year. Does it leak? I lean over to kiss her and recoil.

I love them both. So much. It’s so sad. I feel so sad here. Or would, if I had time to be sad.

Would write more but nature calls. May just go squat in the living room.