Hello from a rainy day in the Northeast where I just had TWO cancellations, in a row, as in an actual block of time, from my calendar today leaving me with some rare middle of the day free time.

So, I thought I would write to discuss one of my favorite people again, my Mom. Yes last night she called me really late just to talk. I have reached that age that when a parent calls after 10pm (because they don’t remember you are in a different time zone) you immediately pounce across the room to grab the phone and answer in a panic (I know, payback) only to find out that she and my father were trying to find, I am not kidding, Matlock, on Netflix and wondered why it wasn’t on there. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the super duper double bad news that both Matlock the show and the character were deader than dead, so we wound up just talking for a bit which was nice because, from all appearances that are possible through sound, she was having a fairly lucid night.

Anyway, as we talked she didn’t remember where I was (I don’t fault her for that because on any given day the likelihood that even Thumper or Axel knows my locale immediately is rare) and I reminded her that her iPhone has the Status app that always shows her where I am and we set about trying to find it on her phone. This turned out to be a difficult thing, so I would up sending her a screen shot of mine that happened to show her the contacts (and their pictures) who allow me to follow their location, one of whom is, of course, Thumper (and, yes, for the record, it’s one of his more rare g-rated face shots), but I didn’t think a thing about that. So, after about 10 minutes discussing how amazing technology is, she suddenly said, “That’s a great picture of Axel and, well, look at me. It says I am 799 miles away, wow” before then saying, “now, who is this that is 905 miles away, he’s handsome” which was then followed by an “oooooh, is this your, <dramatic pause>, friend?”. 

Once again she caught me off guard with this subject but instead of reacting weird like before, this time I just said, “yes, that’s him” and we continued to talk about poor old dead Andy Griffith and what a great fake lawyer he had been. She came back to it and said “Are you still happy? I wondered because you haven’t mentioned him lately”, as if used to start every sentence on my Sunday visit with, “When I was fucking Thumper”.  I just told her that yes I was still fine and that I had not mentioned him because, I guess, there had not been much to report. That seemed to slow the topic but that lasted only for a second before she then asked if he would be coming down for Axel’s surgery in January. That made me laugh thinking of the mental picture of Thumper, the Scotts, and my Mom all peering over the edge of the bed (around the tent patients return with after this type surgery) when he is waking from the anesthesia and his immediate reaction. In fact, that still makes me giggle in my head as I type this. Heh.

After that, not another word was said so the mystery of what she really thinks she knows remains with her. For the record, I really don’t think she thinks that much about it aside from just knowing he is my friend, like my best friend _____, and others. Yet, somehow she also knows he is different too. She doesn’t know I am going there this week because that was just too much trouble, but I am thinking about sending another screen shot to her when he and I are less than 10 feet away from each other just for the reaction alone.

Have a great night.