Mom Leaves Home to Rescue Nancy Pelosi

I interrupt the chronology of the weekend march to assisted living to go back to a political call Mom wanted to heed even if it meant leaving the house.

            It was in October, just a couple of days before what turned out to be her last birthday.  She was still at home.

             I’d made her and Kathy both the tortilla espanola (potato omelet) and Nigerian stew while watching the Giants get struck out the night before, and Mom ate heartily.  I was SO tired, so after lunch we turned on Turner Classics for a movie called “The Unsuspected,” which Mom said, “was just a terrible movie.  It was obvious.  It wasn’t convincing.” 

She thought we should always jump up to get the telephone, which of course went against my personal culture, which considered the message machine a form of protection for friendships and against solicitors, but to make her happy I picked up on what the caller called "a political courtesy call.” 

 Mom started sighing and almost hyperventilating because she didn’t think she’d done her duty to help out “when that decision came out  to permit unlimited amounts of money to campaigns.”  She insisted that we look up the mailing she had failed to respond to, and we found one saying EXPRESS MAIL with a plea from Nancy Pelosi. 

 “She says ‘mail it before you do anything else,’” Mom said, as if Nancy Pelosi was speaking directly to her.  “She says for us to support ‘our courageous house members.’” 
Yeah, I thought.  The ones I’d helped to elect in 2006 because they were going to end our war against Iraq and Afghanistan and close Guantanamo.  But I wanted to help Mom keep the faith, so I just nodded when she said, "Nancy Pelosi is such a good person!"
  Then mom told me, not reading, “People have likened this to the transition from Republicans at the time of the Depression.”  But this was going in the opposite direction.  So we got her checkbook, and she started making out the check.

          “Is it the tenth month?” she asked me.

          “Yes.”

          “Are you sure.”

          “Uh huh. “

          She counted on her fingers.   “January, February, March….”

           She made it out for one hundred and fifty dollars.

          Then she read the letter again and, seeing that the instructions were still to “mail it before you do anything else,” she asked me to take her to the post office.

          I couldn't believe that she was going to go through with it and really leave the house, but she did.

She said, “Oh, this makes me feel so much better.  I was supposed to get this off much earlier.”  She instructed me on how to get to the post office and back, and she was right.  She also tried to keep us both safe, saying things like“Don’t turn now!” when the light was red on a left turn.

          At the same time, she wanted to get us home before her five-minute interlude from bathroom visits was up. 

           “It’s a terrible thing when the most exciting part of your day is your bowel movement,” she said. 

          “But wasn’t it exciting getting off the check to Nancy Pelosi?” I reminded her.  Had she already forgotten?

          “Yes, you’re right.  That was more exciting.” 

            When Kathy got home, she said, “But you sent a fifty dollar check in to the DCCC just five days ago.” 

           But I didn't think Mom had any regrets about writing another, larger check, and I was sure the DCCC wouldn't.  

        

                Love,

                Mom