In Need of Air

27, July 2013

THE MOM:

This is an insanely gorgeous part of the world in the summertime, full of a million wonderful things to do. Jacobs Pillow Dance Festival, Tanglewood, Berkshire Theatre, Williamstown Theatre, Barrington Stage, Shakespeare & Co, Clark Art Museum, Mass Moca, plus lakes, mountains, restaurants, good shops—all you’d want in a summer resort area and more. I have done none of it.

I have been to Price Chopper six times, Guido’s Market three times, Nejaimes wine store twice, Staples, Bed Bath & Beyond, and PetCo. I work most of the day collating tapes and disks and reel to reels and VHSes and CDs and DVDs and in-putting stuff into the computer and pen drives and Dropbox and lugging boxes of scripts around the place until I can’t stand the stench of old dog urine any longer, whereupon I either go out and weed because the place is looking like something from Grey Gardens and I’m so claustrophobic here I don’t know how the parents stand it. Or Alex and I head out across Washington Mountain on a lightning shopping run, where I worry the whole time I might have picked up a tick while weeding and now have Lyme Disease, and we roll back home in time to put dinner on the table, which seems to be my parents cue to go lie down for a nap. Only once in two weeks has my father cleaned his bird-size portion plate. My mother cuts everything into shreds then leaves it, with two exceptions (two meals that Alex cooked: Chicken Piccata and Asian Salmon).

We have had three sets of visitors, journalists and archivists, all to do with my mother and her work and so she has felt important and the center of attention, where she is happiest, and I am glad about this but if she tells me the story about how she once ran into some woman in Greece who turned out to be from Rose Creek, Minnesota just across the street from where her Aunt Frank lived, one more time, I think I may go throw myself off Mt. Greylock.

Alex and I had words the other night, both dead tired, me from the above, him from, as far as I could figure out, doing sweet F-A that was productive all day, which was in fact what triggered the flare-up.

In fact I wasn’t really annoyed with him at all, because in general he’s been like the best assistant you could find, I was just exhausted, and when you’re in that state, as in fact I am now, as in fact I have been since we arrived at my parents’, it doesn’t take much to set you off.

I don’t seem to have any patience whatsoever with my mother. I do not act like a grown up. Why can’t I be smart about it, calm and forgiving, like a good daughter. No idea. All it takes is her complaining about us having a carton of our kind of milk in her fridge, i.e. normal kind, not Lactaid or whatever she drinks, and I lose it. Well I mean please. There’s THREE refrigerators in this place, her daughter and grandson can’t put a couple of things in that we like without her going spare? I give up.

Alex was so very kind to me the other night. Prior to that he’d been completely horrid, we’d exchanged words at the DVD converter machine in front of my parents and two other people. I yelled “Don’t you dare ever speak to me that way again!” and went off in a huff. Five minutes later he came up into my room and gave me a hug and apologized and said I was right, and that he’d just apologized to everyone downstairs for speaking to me so rudely, then sat me down and said how concerned he was about me, that I was letting things get to me so, that I seemed so unhappy all the time, how I needed to learn to let whatever my mother says or does just wash over me and not take it to heart or I’d never survive and he didn’t want me having a heart attack (with his birthday coming up on Wednesday).

We’re going into the city for a few nights to escape. He’ll be on his own one night in New York. Am trying not to think about it.

Apologies for being boring and tired, it’s almost 1:00am and I’ve been up since 6:00. And today Alex spent from about 9:00am till 6:00 studying Biology for his GED so remind me to stop moaning about him. Habit.