Costco Dad

Dear Keith,

Like my father before me I am now a Costco Member. I signed up at the lowest level online, went to membership to get my card where they convinced me to upgrade to executive, get a Costco credit card which gives me 2 percent back and 80 dollar in gift certificates and they have Costco Travel, a ten level Cruise ship where you can meet other like minded people.

”I used to come here when my dad was a member,” I tell the sales woman who is so happy I am agreeing with all of her suggestions, “but I stopped coming when he died.”

She gives me a Costco gift bag for my grief. Free merch: an orange mango drink, baby wipes, a giant roll of Kirkland paper towels.

Now it’s time for your picture, she says. I stand in front of the blue screen, posing like a middle aged man with the best of his life behind him. The camera thing, a tiny black snake attached to the computer, is frozen. I work on my smiling, looking out at the throngs of people in Teterboro’s giant warehouse on a Wednesday morning. The common man shopping in bulk is a country music song.

I decided to make this drastic turn because my weekly trips to ShopRite to buy food for my mother (and also my wife and kids) feels endless. Things are supposed to be fair. When my sister decided she wouldn’t help with our mother, part of me wants to tell her every time I buy food or take my mother to the doctors, or take care of the dog or deal with sewage problems in the house, the list of all the things I’ve done that my sister hasn’t. It’s not fair list.

Like a hero I return to my two bedroom apartment with a four pack of Sensodyne whitening toothpaste, 38 mini humus, two oversized Stonehenge organic cracker boxes. My wife complains she doesn’t like bulk. It’s too much stuff. I tell her you have to applaud the hero’s journey.

Do you and Nicole go to Costcos? There’s no music in the giant warehouse. I think people would leave you to shop because everyone is focused on making choices for their own lives.

After filling up with Costco gas I call my mom up on the car phone:

“Mommy, it’s me. You’re not going to believe where I am.”

“Hi Michael,” my mother says. “I’m so busy. There’s so much pressure with this. I have to finish writing this thing for that man.”

”What man?” I say.

”I can’t remember his name. It’s that man that knows the mayor. He lives in the neighborhood. I have to get this done. It’s such a pain in the ass.”

Lately my mother is mixing past memories with her present moment.

“Mom, big news, I am a new Costco member!”

”Oh my,” she says laughing. I imagine her remembering Ira, my dad, her husband who told her that she would miss him when he was gone. I can see him walking the aisles, using the cart as a walker as his heart was failing. My dad and I had our sacred family meals at the dollar hot dogs and unlimited soda refills at the picnic table after the check out. On our last visit before Ira died I made him pay for all my stuff. He was so pissed he refused to pay for my birthday dinner at Baumgarts.

Kieth, I get this feeling that life is going on for too long. It’s zigzagging to places like Teterboro, where I’m all alone, when I want to be under an orange tree in Nashville chatting with you.

I even took my mother to the Hair Luxe women’s salon in Cresskill. I got the idea from our couples therapist when I told her my mother was screaming when her aide was washing her hair. Adina and I are still in couples therapy with Monica, an older Jewish woman on the upper west side who still only sees people on ZOOM. If you and Nicole are having issues I could refer you. We only see her once a month and Monica says we’re doing much better.

I was the only man in Hair Luxe, a salon with a sea of women. They were so nice to my mom, as I sat like she was my child. She just went to the shampoo sink, leaned back and had hair washed then sat to have it cut and blown out. She didn’t make small talk but was able to tell Irene, the stylist, she didn’t want bangs. Today she said she’ll never go back. “They don’t know what to do with hair,” she says. “They made me look like an old woman.”

I guess it’s a good sign that my mom is complaining. That’s her life force.

Keith, I always say I can live without music, but can I? I feel like an over-worked Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music who always keeps the kids occupied. I buy their clothes at the mall rather than sewing them from the curtains.

I fear I am taking care of too, too much.

Love Michael PIckles