by Peggy Rowe
“This is what we want,” said my husband, opening his newspaper. “This is definitely us.”
Accessorized with an apron, a mixing bowl, and a spatula, I forced a toothy grin and knew at once the perfect spot for the photograph: my bottom dresser drawer.
A week before Christmas, we picked up our family portrait. Phil, the family entrepreneur, promptly entered it in a contest at a local store and won dinner for four at a posh restaurant in Columbia, Maryland. For Christmas that year, John and I gave my parents a box of Whitman’s Assorted Chocolates (with cream centers), a bottle of White Zinfandel wine, and dinner at a posh restaurant in Columbia. They were delighted.
We treated Phil and Scott and their friends to dinner at a local “hamburger joint.” They were equally delighted.
Our family portrait still hangs in a place of honor in our home.
Mom smiled when she saw it, I think.
The Day Mom and I Ate at the White House
My mother discovered day-tripping by bus when she was in her late eighties. She looked forward to these excursions with the same anticipation she held for Oriole games and Christmas. For my father, these bus trips were right up there with a stomach ulcer—with perforation. He put it succinctly: “There’s too much eating and too much shopping! And my rear end can’t take all that sitting!”
Mom understood. They had spent some wonderful winters together in Florida while Dad could still drive. And now her love should spend his twilight years doing what made him happy.
So Mom joined the local AARP group, which was filled with like-minded seniors. While she climbed aboard comfortable motor coaches for a day of adventure, Dad and John (now retired) climbed aboard the tractor and headed into the woods for a day of sawing and gathering firewood. With a thermos, a bag lunch, and two exuberant dogs in tow, they lived every man’s dream—well, Dad’s dream anyway. Oh, there was grass-cutting and the occasional home repair or improvement project, and, naturally, afternoon coffee at McDonald’s “shooting the breeze” with other retirees.
I loved Mom’s bus excursions, and not just because of the yummy bakery treats she carried home. My mother could still tell a good story, and senior bus trips were rife with drama. Whether the stories were completely factual or not, they were entertaining and often hilarious—and perfect for someone who loved the spotlight.
On one trip, a traveling buddy discovered that she had mistakenly discarded her false teeth with her trash at McDonald’s on the way home. When she missed them, several miles down the road, she was so distraught that the driver, with forty seniors on board, turned the bus around and drove back. After the manager rifled through the trash with no luck, the driver insisted the woman empty her purse on a table. And there were her dentures, wrapped in a wad of paper napkins along with several creamers and packets of mustard and ketchup.
“She wasn’t very popular on the trip home, I can tell you that!” Mom said. Funnier still was a trip to Winchester, Virgina. As the bus swayed and swerved around the Blue Ridge Mountains, the woman sitting across from my mother threw up into a small trash bag.
“And don’t you know, after a while, the woman sitting beside her started filling up her own trash bag,” Mom said, making a face.
“This is the best part,” she said. “We were going around a mountain when a man came crashing through the lavatory door! He landed in the lap of the women across the aisle—with his pants around his knees!” she said, giggling. “I learned something today. Never sit across from the lavatory!”
She needn’t have warned me; I had made up my mind long ago that, when it came to bus trips, I was with Dad. So when my mother invited me on a holiday bus trip to Washington D.C., I was ready with an excuse.
“Thanks, Mom, but I’m way behind in my Christmas shopping. I just don’t have the time, I’m afraid.”
My mother’s persuasive tactics, though subtler in later years, had grown even more effective. Just as some artists prefer oils, and others watercolor, my mother’s preferred medium was guilt—and she applied it liberally.
“But, honey, this is your Christmas gift to me. I’m almost ninety, and I’ve never seen the White House. This is my last chance. We should see it together.”
Why couldn’t I just say, “Mom, you have lots of friends. Invite one of them to go with you!” But her pitiful plea brought to mind a trip to Chincoteague all those years ago. She had done it for love and even managed to enjoy herself. I could do as much.
She resembled a Norman Rockwell painting that December morning. A sprig of holly in her permed gray hair, silver bells dangling from her ears, and enough enthusiasm to fill a bus. There was a light dusting of powdery snow on the grass when I dropped her off next to the two buses that were parked at the curb.
“You can get in line while I park the car in the back,” I said. “Be careful!”
Minutes later I grabbed our tote bag, locked the car, and boarded the bus with the D.C. sign in the window. On board, I looked for my mother, but she was nowhere in sight. I ran to the front and told the driver she was missing. He immediately blew his horn to stop the bus behind us that was pulling away from the curb and heading north to Philadelphia.
Finally, after the nice driver retrieved my mother from the northbound bus, we sat side-by-side heading south to our nation’s capital. I tried not to think about the decorations on my dining room table and the unopened box of Christmas cards.
“Isn’t this exciting?” Mom said, her bells reflecting the morning sunlight and jangling when she moved her head.
“Yes, very exciting.”
An hour later, we arrived at the White House.
“After the tour, you will exit on the other side of the building. Just look for our bus along the curb,” our driver directed. “Enjoy yourselves!” I admired his Christmas spirit. It matched my mother’s.
“Wait for me, Mom,” I said, taking her scarf from the tote bag. But she was halfway down the aisle and out of earshot. I panicked when I heard, “Aw, that old lady fell.”
By the time I reached my mother, the bus driver was on the sidewalk and helping her to her feet. “She’s all right,” he said to me. “She went down slow and landed easy.” And then in a whisper, “You might want to keep your eye on her.” Like I hadn’t tried.
“Did you get wet, Mom?”
“No, I’m fine,” she said, taking my arm. “Isn’t this fun?”
Inside the White House, Mom paused at each room, drinking it all in with reverence and sounding like a docent until the guards moved us along.
“This was President Kennedy’s favorite room,” she informed me at the Blue Room. “This is the official Christmas tree,” she said at the Red Room. “Isn’t this a lovely shade of red! The color for the walls and upholstery was chosen by Hillary Clinton.” My mother had clearly done her homework.
Our final stop was the East Room, where school choruses were singing carols before an enormous Christmas tree decorated with ornaments from around the world. Here, Mom called my attention to the famous portrait of President George Washington and looked sad when she spoke of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy lying in state in this very room. “Lynda Bird Johnson was married in the East Room,” she told me.
Then she opened her purse. “Here,” she whispered, pressing half a dozen Wheat Thins into the palm of my hand. “Munch on these. You can tell your friends you ate at the White House with your mother.”
I stifled a giggle and kept an eye on the guard while we nibbled our crackers. People were enjoying, “Here Comes Santa Claus” when I looked around and didn’t recognize anyone else from our bus.
“Uh oh, we have to leave!” I said.
“Not yet.” Mom shook her head firmly. “President Clinton still might show up.”
“Mom, the bus!”
She looked at me with pleading brown eyes. “I’ll never get here again, honey.” She looked toward the stairway, hoping for a miracle. After two more carols, I guided her from the White House and looked a
long the curb. There were a dozen buses, but not ours.
“There it is,” my mother said, pointing across the lawn. “And it’s driving away!”
“Oh, crap!” I said, panicking and mentally calculating the taxi fare back to Baltimore. I scurried off, waving my White House brochure in the air. Pigeons fluttered around me, and tourists stared.
Thanks to D.C. traffic, the bus had come to a standstill when the passengers saw me and alerted the driver. I hurried back for my mother. She was standing in the exact spot where I had left her, with her mouth open—as though she’d seen Hitler’s storm troopers marching toward her.
“Peggy! You said crap!”
“I did? Well, I must have been extremely upset. Come on, we have to go. They’re waiting for us.”
In the bus, we were greeted by our driver’s icy stare.
“Where have you been? Thanks to you two, we’re twenty minutes behind schedule!”
“We were enjoying ourselves like you told us to,” Mom said, matter-of-factly.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, out of breath.
He wasn’t smiling, and neither were the other passengers. “If this happens again, I won’t wait. You’ll have to take a cab to our next stop.”
I sat beside my mother, feeling sorry for anybody who left her dentures in a restaurant today. Moments later, our bus pulled to the curb.
“You’re on your own for a quick lunch,” the driver announced. “Be back on the bus by one-thirty. We’re behind schedule.” He was staring directly at me, of course. An old woman across the aisle tapped her watch and repeated loudly, “One-thirty!” Mom sniffed, raised her eyebrows, and threw her head back.
We slipped into a noisy café, popular with young people and famous for loud music. A busy waitress seated us at a round table with six strangers. We were halfway through our soup and shared sandwich when the other diners threw money into the center of the table and left. When we finished, the waitress was nowhere to be found, so we added our money to the pile and headed for the door.
We were almost there when a hysterical voice silenced the lunchtime hubbub. “They’re getting away! Stop them!”
My first thought was that there must be a hold-up. I tried not to panic as I grabbed Mom’s elbow and looked for something to hide behind. Throwing her under a table didn’t seem like a good idea. Suddenly, our waitress appeared and waved a stack of bills in my face.
“You two stiffed me out of my tip!” she yelled.
Diners stopped eating, and people waiting in line stared at us as if we were making off with the till. I told myself I would never see these people again—except for those from our bus, of course.
A muscular young man with a shaved head and red bow tie stepped in front of us. His arms were folded across his chest, and he wore a gold earring. He was Mr. Clean without the friendly smile.
“You two owe me money!” the indignant waitress shouted in our faces.
“We left the amount of our check plus a generous tip,” I said. “It was the others at our table . . .”
“No problem,” said the man, flexing his biceps. “Just pay the waitress, then collect it from the others when you get to the bus.”
The bus! I looked at my watch. 1:25 P.M. “Uh, how much?” I asked.
“I’ll settle for ten bucks,” said the waitress.
It was extortion, and I should have asked to see the manager, but it was worth $10 to get back on the bus by 1:30. As I opened my purse, Mom slapped her wrinkled, arthritic hand on top of mine and announced firmly, “Those people were not from our bus, young lady, and we’re not paying somebody else’s bill.” She took my arm, and together we walked around Mr. Clean and through the quiet cafe. When we reached the door, there was scattered applause, which Mom acknowledged with a nod and a jingle.
“Isn’t this a wonderful trip?” she said, taking my arm as we headed up the sidewalk in our nation’s capital. “And didn’t you just love the White House?”
I turned and stared at her, wondering where she had been for the last humiliating half hour—and that’s when I saw them. The waitress and bouncer were right behind us, little puffs of steam coming from their nostrils and goosebumps on their bare arms.
“We’ll see what your bus driver has to say about this!” the bouncer called to us.
I had the strongest urge to walk past our bus, but it was late, and Mom was tired, so I climbed the steps behind her.
“Well, well,” said the driver, looking at his watch and smiling. “Look who’s back almost on time.”
I pointed over my shoulder. “These people say we owe them money, but we don’t. It was those other . . .”
Suddenly, the Grinch stood up and put his hand on my shoulder.
“Just take your seats, ladies. This isn’t your problem. I’ll take care of it.”
We sat down and looked out the window in time to see the waitress and bouncer turn on their heels and head back to the restaurant.
“Merry Christmas, dear,” my mother said. “This is your best gift ever.” Then she put her head back and closed her eyes. “Remind me to pick up some pastry at the restaurant. We’ll have some good stories tonight.”
“Two more stops,” the driver announced: “The Arboretum and the National Cathedral. I hope you saved room for a big dinner at Mrs. K’s Toll House Restaurant.”
I rubbed my throbbing temples, wondering if today’s drama would ever end. I knew I didn’t have to worry about my language transgression being part of tonight’s story. It wasn’t the sort of thing my mother would repeat. By the time the bus began moving, Mom was snoring softly.
On the bright side, how many of my friends have eaten at the White House with their mothers? I wondered if someday I could find some humor in today’s excitement. I doubted it.
The Rascal Scooter
It comes to us all in the end—that role reversal between parent and child. It’s a natural progression. Unless, of course, your mother is the take-charge type like mine. Then you’d better stock up on Tums.
I dialed my mother’s number at the retirement home, struggling to keep my eyes open. I had lain awake half the night, rehearsing my speech. It was time to tell my ninety-one-year-old mother she could no longer drive her motorized scooter through the hallways of the retirement home. There had been an incident.
I had gone through the same drama just a year earlier, when I had to tell her that she could no longer drive her car. Her response was seared in my brain.
“I’ll know when it’s time to stop driving! Nobody will have to tell me!” Her expression said, “Who do you think you are, giving me advice?” And I was twelve years old again, being told to go to bed because it was a school night.
“Mom, you don’t need to drive,” I had told her. “There’s a shuttle bus, and I’m available most days.” She sniffed and threw her head back.
“Mom, you fell asleep behind the wheel! Remember?”
“I was in the parking lot, for Pete’s sake.”
“Mom, your door was open, and you had one foot in the car and one foot out. Security thought you were unconscious!”
It took months and cost me a fortune in Tums, but I finally convinced her to sell her car.
That was a year ago, and now I had to tell her that she could no longer drive her motorized Rascal scooter.
I could wait for management to step in and impound it, of course. It was just a matter of time. But that would be humiliating for her, like being called to the principal’s office and reprimanded. No, I had to handle this! She was my mother, after all!
Her phone rang again. No answer.
I don’t know why I was worried. The evidence was on my side. My limp, for instance, from when she had driven her scooter over my foot three days earlier. And the large hole in her foyer wall.
The other residents would thank me, that’s for sure. She had been terrorizing them for nearly a year now. They scattered like cockroaches in sunlight when they saw Mom’s scooter bearing down on them in the hallwa
ys. It was almost comical seeing their reaction the day the elevator door opened and, before we could get on, the few passengers inside took one look at Mom in her scooter and rushed through the door as though they were heading for free-card night at Bingo.
Yesterday had been the final straw. I shuddered when I thought about it. I was having lunch with my mother in the crowded dining room.
“Look Mom, there are two spaces over there,” I said, pointing to a round table for eight. We greeted the other six diners and proceeded to take our places. As Mom shifted into park, her scooter inched beneath the edge of the table, somehow sliding the gear into forward.
Seeing Mom’s Rascal scooter charge ahead, pushing the table with six screaming seniors backwards across the dining room floor and into the tables beyond, was a sight I will not soon forget.
Nobody was hurt, but, sadly, old people are not famous for a sense of humor. And their sense of adventure is right up there with their desire for a Mohawk and a gold nose ring. Naturally, management got wind of the disaster.
With each ring of Mom’s telephone, my heart beat faster. What now? I worried, picturing my mother in some new predicament in her apartment. After the fourth ring, she finally picked up.
“Mom?”
“I can’t talk to you now, honey. The firemen are still here. I’ll call you back when the smoke clears.” This is quite possibly the worst response a daughter can hear from her ninety-one-year-old mother.
I dropped the phone and made a beeline for my car. Luckily, my limp was much improved, and in no time, I was on the road and headed to the home, dreading what awaited me. It seemed like just yesterday that I was sixteen and she was handing me the keys to the family car. And today, I had to ask her for the key to her scooter.
The Sunday paper was strewn about Mom’s apartment, and the acrid odor of smoke hung in the air. On the kitchen counter, a charcoaled cake clung to the outside of a black pan, and batter was burned to the bottom of the oven.
“Are you all right, Mom? I thought we agreed that you were not going to cook anymore. You do not need to cook!”