UNMOVEABLE MOM

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We all sat at the round table in the atrium. Mom, Tessie my older sister (much older) my brother-in-law Tom, my sister Fran and me at the nursing home where Mom is trying to mend.

Enjoying the get-together since Fran and Tom are from Connecticut, we joked and laughed when the dietician delivered a lunch tray to Mom.

“Well Mom, lunch is here! Looks good, no?”

“No!”

Mystery meat?

The lunch was a simple sandwich of mystery meat and motor oil (10W 30) on white sliced bread and some string beans with a soup, chocolate pudding pie, tea and milk.

“But Ma, you have a nice sandwich here!”

Shaking her head no, she says: “I don’t want it. What kind of soup is that?”

“Looks like a vegetable soup! Ma, do you like the food here?”

“No! I want to go home in my own house. I can’t wait to get out of here.”

“Now Ma, let me try just a corner of the sandwich, maybe I can figure out what it is.”

I cut and discover it is meatloaf in the consistency of a dark chocolate bar.

“Hmmmm, good!”

Mom looks at me like I’m crazy.

“Ma, you ought to try it, it’s good, but the next time have them remove the crust!”

“NO!”

I cut another piece and Fran says: “Look Ma, it must be good, he cut another piece!”

Sometimes you have to lie when raising a parent.

“Sure he did, he eats anything if it’s free!”

Well that is not true, there are some things I would pass on, but I do like to live on the edge sometimes. This was definitely one of them, and I may add very edgy.

I cut another piece and remark: “Gee Ma, you don’t know what you’re missing!” (May God forgive me for lying to my mother.)

I eat the last piece of sandwich and now I am getting the business from everyone at the table, when a resident sits at another table and puts down a tray of lunch, and goes over to the coffee machine..

“Hey Joe!” says my Polish brother-in-law: “I’ll keep him busy while you steal his lunch!”