THE COLDEST NIGHT

Mom, dear Mom, has a stubborn streak. After years of yelling at me, and my sisters, not to mention my father, about NOT listening to what she said, she has decided that she shouldn’t listen to her children. I guess this is payback for her by ignoring us.

The recent storm we had the day after Christmas, Mom lost her electricity. This meant that she also lost her phone for some reason. Well into the storm, I decided to call her to see that she was OK. No answer meant to me that she was either at my sister’s house or my niece’s house, who lives close by. I started to call around, and no, no one had Mom!

The storm had hit the night before, and it was the early am when I called. We put out the alert, and my nephew Gerard went to her house to find her there! Mom, dear sweet Mom, had no electricity, no phone, and NO HEAT, over night. Mom had a First Alert device to wear around her neck, in case of an emergency, but it was a “Pain in the neck” to wear. This meant that under absolutely no circumstances, would she use it, even if it were in her hand! What to do with Mom?

Mom, dear sweet loveable Mom, the Mom that would pounce on me with her wooden spoon if I did something dumb, has a boyfriend. He is 87, she is 92, Henry is his name, and he is her boy toy. Henry is just as stubborn as dear sweet loveable Mom, he doesn’t think anybody, (and this means YOU) should need a cell phone. Doesn’t believe in cell phones, after all, what did we do with out them when they didn’t exist? I assume he doesn’t own a car, a TV or a wristwatch because he was around when they didn’t exist.

“Ma, you need a cell phone!”
“Nah, Henry says I don’t. Henry says he’s always around.”
“Ma, you send Henry home at night, you need a cell phone.”
“Please, what am I going to do with that thing?”
“What, Henry?”
“Huh? No, The phone!”
“Ma. You froze to death last night, you should have had a phone to call one of us to come and get you, or get you help”
“Yes, Joseph.”
“You know you had us all worried?”
“Yes, Joseph”
“Why don’t you ever listen to us?”
“Please, don’t lecture me.”

I order a phone, it comes in the mail, I go there and deliver it to Dear sweet, ever-loveable and contrite Mom.

I knock
“Oh! It’s you!”
“Yes Mom, I have the phone.”
“OOOOH!”

With me in large type is the instruction, which give her step-by-step instructions on how to use it, how to call with single number quick dialing, and an emergency button that will dial up each of 5 numbers I set up, in succession until one of us answers.

Mom does the dialing, and after a few times, she seems to have it down pat.
She hits the emergency button and my older sister Tessie (Much older) answers.
“Hi Theresa, guess what, I’m on my new cell phone!”
I hear a loud sound like someone crashing to the floor.’

“Ma, hang up before someone else gets hurt!”
“Listen you, don’t get so smart. You’re not too big to hit over the head with a wooden spoon!”
“OK Mom, we will plug this into a wall and just use it in an emergency.”

As I leave, I wonder: Will she really use it, or was that to just get rid of me?

Happy Birthday to my lovely niece, Elizabeth Manning-Gohlinghorst, a beautiful niece, Mom and wife! She has two great kids who must take after me, and a very smart husband to have married her!