We have had four Christmases so far, in two states. Thank you, divorce and remarriage, for amplifying this particular holiday from one holy birthday to five. (And I immediately imagine five tiny baby Jesuses in five little manger troughs, Mary, beleaguered and covered in holy spit-up, shoving around a five-bay wooden wagon full of squirming, grabby toddler saviors..."Jesus 1! Stop bringing the dead flies on the apple cart back to life! Jesus 3! Leave the warts on the toad! They're supposed to look like that. Jesus 4! Just because you can crawl on water doesn't mean you should! Mama can't swim out into the middle of the Red Sea to get you every time you want to go freak out a seagull.")
Hee hee.
Over the holiday(s), my beloved Mom (aka tinyangrymom) got really sick, hacking and coughing, and generally making a phlegmy nuisance of herself. She weighs about 100 pounds (literally, not "soakin' wet!" or any other cute aphorism to indicate petititude). So when the doctor prescribed cough medicine with codeine, some other antibiotic crap, and another mysterious medicine, all of which cautioned that they would cause drowsiness, I was logically concerned for her safety. That's a lot of drowsy for not a lot of lady. So, I did what I do. I didn't offer to stay with her or have her stay at my house or anything-I just announced that I expected her to check in with me regularly and lucidly, or I would send the 911 door-axers over to her house to fireman-carry her to the hospital. After she sent me the same question in a check-in text session twice, I decided to go visit her and bring her some soup or something to throw her off the fact that I was checking to see if she had gone all Hunter S. Thompson on me.
She was okay, of course, albeit a little crusty and maybe more creative in her clothing selection than she would normally be. She's not one to veer far from the fleece ensemble or plaid flannel jammies for loungewear - she looks like a page out of an LL Bean catalogue most of the time, bedtime included. She has penny loafers, and there are actual pennies in them. She owns at least ten pairs of knee-high, wool cabled socks. Pleated denim t-length skirts? Check. Crisp white button-downs and tiny pearl earrings? Check. Navy blue...everything? Check.
So, when she's wearing the hot pink fleece pants over the plaid flannel jammies, I am logically worried.
Further, as she puttered around her kitchen, coughing and impotently cleaning up (moving dirty dishes from one spot on the counter to the other), I glanced over her to the tv in the living room and noticed two things: one, the tv was tuned in again to the Hallmark channel. Two, the Closed Captioning was on, in French.
There are a number of things about this that are confusing. First and most obvious is that my mother was definitely deliberately watching the Hallmark channel. In fact, almost every time I come to her apartment, she is watching the Hallmark channel. Have you ever watched the Hallmark channel? It's the television network equivalent of a melted hot fudge sundae; room temperature, disgustingly, sense-thwartingly sweet and thick, thick, thick. I know the Hallmark channel is no worse than the reality-show channels, or the shop-at-home channels, or the kind-of-sex channels, and I like to get my Murder She Wrote and Golden Girls on occasionally, I'll admit. But my mom is the opposite of the Hallmark channel.
For example: my mom and I were walking through the gym at the YMCA, where we walk together sometimes. Some guy was shooting hoops, sinking almost everything he put up. I mention that not because I'm a fan, but because it's important for you to know that he wasn't firing off the basketball like a toddler lobbing wooden blocks. We needed to walk under the basket into which he was sinking said basketballs. He politely put the ball under his arm and waited for us to pass. I smiled, and said, "Thank you!" sincerely as we walked by. My mom stared resolutely ahead, walking 1508871375981 miles an hour to the walking track entrance. "You're just like my friend Alice," she said. "You walk by that guys and say, 'oh, thank you for being soooooooo nice...'" - my mother widened her eyes and mocked an expression of over-the-top gratefulness, like Oliver Twist or an incredibly sarcastic French waiter - "you say, 'oh, thank you' like he did some HUGE favor for you. You know what the difference is between you and me? I walk by that guy and I think, 'Go ahead and hit me, motherf*cker. You just go ahead.'"
She's right- there's a subtle difference.
Once, in a conversation my sister and I were having about what the worst present ever would be, my mom said that the worst Christmas present you could ever get somebody was to tie them to a chair, duct tape their eyes open, and force them to watch the entire "Touched by an Angel" library. (We can talk about the fact that this was a "present" to her later. It might support my point here.)
So, it surprised me that she is not a tourist to the Hallmark channel, but a regular visitor. A resident, if you will.
The next obvious irregularity in the scene was the presence not just of subtitles (lest she miss any critical Hallmark channel dialogue, and get lost in the complex plot twists and turns), but of French subtitles. "Mom, why do you have the subtitles on?" I asked her.
"Subtitles? What are you talking about? Those aren't subtitles! That's Closed Captioning - haven't you ever heard of that?" (See? Subtle. A subtle difference between us.)
"Yes, yes I have. So, why do you have the Closed Captioning on? And why is it in French?" I asked.
"It's not in French." She retorted. I looked over her head. Tres bien. Merci, mon ami, said the Closed Captioning. "Yes, it is." I said.
"No it isn't." She said. And then, we both turned to look at the screen, where the French words zipped by in their little black box at the left of the screen. "French." I said. And a weird thing happened - we were both staring at the screen, staring at the French words on the screen, confounded by their presence. Then, the French words disappeared, and a series of paragraphs in English appeared.
"They must have been saying something in French," My mom offered. We both started laughing.
"For a second there, I though you'd been watching this movie the whole time in French, without even noticing. Like you just started speaking french spontaneously. Learned it accidentally from watching the Hallmark channel with French subtitles on," I laughed.
Mom covered her face, trying not to laugh so hard she started coughing.
"Closed Captioning," She said.
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