Another 6 weeks have flown by. SO much has happened so I’ll break it into semi-digestible nuggets so you won’t be abysmally bored.
A few days after my last post, my brother Fred and I got into a little fistacuffs. I suppose I might have been feeling a little cranky. All these drugs will eventually do that to even the most even-tempered bloke. But he nipped. I nipped back and before I knew it we were locked in a death grip. (Okay. That might be a slight exaggeration.)
That Thursday, my mom was actually “dressed as a grown up,” as she puts it when she has to look presentable or professional. She had off-white linen slacks and a sage and green linen blazer. She was supposed to be going to something called a memorial service for a friend of hers who had passed away a month earlier. The woman they were memorializing was named BettyRoberts.
I got to meet her once when she came to a turkey fry at our house. My mom seemed to really like her. She was a “Hillary person” and I’m not quite sure what that means. According to my mom, she was someone who walked the talk. Bandwagons are certainly made to be jumped on but she fought for equality before equality became a trendy cause du jour. My mom said that there weren’t enough women like her – women who fought the fight because she believed in it. Not because she wanted her ego massaged or her picture taken. She had a lot of fabulous firsts in her life. She was the first woman to serve on the Oregon Supreme Court. My mom also said also said she was a pretty good poker player. I guess you had to have a good poker face if you were always dealing with people telling you that you were “less than…” But I digress.
My mom was on her way out the door when Fred and I got into it. And there was blood. It looked worse than it was but since I have a very full white collar around my neck, it looked as if my throat had been slit. My mom got between us and then there was even more blood. Truth be told, it doesn’t look good on off-white linen. Fred got me over the eye but apparently my eyes are so tough, he lost a tooth. My lip was punctured, so was Fred’s foot. Yuki was petrified but that’s pretty much her constant state. (She’s still a little tentative more often than not.)
Once we all calmed down, my mom decided not to attend the memorial which I thought was something she really wanted to do, getting dressed up and all. But I overheard her on the phone and she said that memorials were for the living and that she had said her goodbyes a few weeks ago. She ditched her bloody grown up clothes, took off her earrings, sat in the back yard, and shed a tear by herself. Fred and I behaved for the rest of the evening in honor of Justice Roberts.
