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So Maw is on a whine-a-thon. I could barely sit next to her at supper. Headache was making me positively crosseyed but I couldn’t say a thing, even to Gary. Maw has simply ruined whining for the rest of us.
I’m not sure what’s the matter with her, specifically, right now. It could be a number of things. My turnaround time on errands has been pretty dismal over the past week. I haven’t taken her shopping anywhere in four or five days at least. I have been working on their tax return, but I’m not done and I have been unable to tell her exactly how much they’ll have to pay. Gary and I are in deep shit with the IRS – I’m not sure why that bothers Maw, but it does, and that makes me angrier still, her appropriating my anxiety.
She has been phoning the relatives all day, soliciting cards for Paw’s birthday. She insists we “make a big deal” of Paw’s party this year. I don’t know what she has in mind. Should I hire a clown? A hooker? She tells me that for “at least a month” Paw has been thinking that every day is his birthday. He hasn’t said a thing about it to me, and when I quizzed him at the supper table he seemed to have no idea his birthday was coming up.
But about an hour ago Maw called me down and told me to bring my screw gun. As soon as I saw that she had filled another shoe organizer with photographs and wanted me to attach it to the one tiny bit of wall that remained unplastered with old pictures, I suddenly realized exactly what we’re dealing with: loneliness. Maw gets attacks of loneliness every couple months or so. She is homesick for the South, the little town where we’re from and all the family and friends she had to leave when she and Paw came up here to the frozen North to live with us. And the last couple of days here have been rainy and cold; this kind of weather really drives home the point that we ain’t in Dixieland no more.
I’m not sure what to do for Maw and her loneliness. She has no desire to make any new connections with people around here. She harbors a thinly veiled contempt for our friends and for Gary’s extended family. Come to think of it, when Maw’s loneliness hit this time last year, I bought her a plane ticket home. She went and stayed with her sister for a month. I’d do that again, but I’m pretty sure her doctors would veto the idea.
I wonder if I could entice any of the relatives to come up here? I don’t know. Not too many of Maw’s friends are in any shape to be traveling the globe themselves. The other idea I had was to maybe buy Maw a laptop. She’s not too old to learn how to connect with friends back home the way the rest of us do (i.e., Facebook). Of course, there’s the possibility that she might stumble upon this site.
Hah. Fat chance of that. After a whole month, my only reader is Gary.
Come be my second reader! thanklessjob.typepad.com/so
