As of this writing, she has eluded arrest.
Which is not The Besst thing that has happened in the Lost Three Weeks. Let’s roll the tape:
Week of July 27th: We celebrate Grandpa, Interrupted’s 87th birthday. Mom, Interrupted takes a week off from her day job as we (as a small part of a team of what seems like thousands) help the Grandparents, Interrupted move into our home.
Such a tiny, offhand sentence, and such an inadequate way to describe an event that plays out in my memory like a Cecil B. DeMille production, up to and including the parting of the Red Sea and the building of the pyramids.
Some days you feel like the thoughtless Pharoah, some days you feel like the downtrodden slave.
And because Time is NOT God’s way of making sure everything doesn’t happen at once but is, at best, God’s way of making sure I have a heart attack before my next birthday: the building of the pyramids neatly coincided with a trek through the desert to Colorado to help the Interrupted In-Laws celebrate their 50th anniversary.
Week of August 3rd: Still ‘enjoying’ a ‘vacation’ (but letmetellyouinternetz; if I hadn’t blown six days of paid vacation on Pyramid Building and Desert Trekking I would have died of stress) at the outset of the week but then pay for all that frivolity by having to tackle a project at work that was deceptively difficult and made me long for the simple days of Pyramid Building and Desert Trekking.)
I have no memory of that week, other than that I was still breathing at the end of it.
Week of August 10th: We settle in. Having the ‘rents living with us is exactly as I pictured: we eat dinner every night with everyone who is in the house. It’s like we’re a family or something. Elmer the Basset Hound is ecstatic because he gets a walk almost every day with his Grandpa. I’m hearing fabulous stories from long ago. The Sons, Interrupted love it, in part, I’m sure, because they can hide behind their grandparents but hey, I’ll take it.
And we have our revelations. Of course, we already know that Grandma, Interrupted is an artist. We all knew that Mom has been painting steadily for something like sixty years. We all knew that she’s not particularly keen about giving up the paintings (Patricia’s painting are usually on loan, like from the Louvre).
What we didn’t realize is exactly how many paintings she had squirreled away in her home. But boy, oh, boy, did we ever find out.
To give you some idea of the scale, this represents a fraction of what Mom brought with her:
We’re still unpacking bigger boxes that have more pictures in them. Those thick boxes at the back of the stack? Multiple pictures.
They might be breeding in there. Which is not a bad thing, because Mom’s work is really, really good.
Hell Week with the Deceptively Difficult Project is pretty much survived.
Of Special Note: the oldest Daughter, Interrupted celebrates a milestone birthday in what looks to me like a life worth celebrating and we wave good-bye to the youngest Daughter, Interrupted as she sets off to grad school in the Midwest.
I will neither confirm nor deny that I checked the sex offender registry in her new neighborhood.
And that brings us up to date. Management looks forward to resuming your Daily Besst. Many thanks to those who noted the lack of posting and wrote to make sure we weren’t lying in a ditch, hoping someone would worry about us.
© E. Stocking Evans 2014
Mom, Interrupted 