Over

(A Liberator experimnet with Polaroid 55 P/N)

It has been slow at the Cafe.  Perhaps it is the holiday.  Lazy days of rich foods and expensive champagnes and friends and family, too.  It was balmy in the semi-tropics.  I hope Klaus made his last stops here.  He might decide to stay awhile.

The day passed uneventfully.  I rose too early, made coffee and read and wrote to you, then went for an exercise run on a course in a park that was empty.  Not a car.  I was alone.  I gave myself a break and did not push.  I thought of skiing in Park City in a few weeks and knew two things.  I would not be in great shape no matter what, and if I hurt myself, I would not be skiing at all.  And so I ran with the ghosts of people I had done this with over the years.  They were good company.

By noon, I was ready for mother's.  And so I packed up gifts and a big bottle of Christmas Ale from Belgium and a wonderful bottle of champagne, the one my mother had been clamoring for the night before.  I had bought the world's smallest turkey as dinner for two.  It weighed less than nine pounds, an easy cook, and there would still be leftovers for sandwiches.  There would be the whole package--stuffing, cranberries, sweet potatoes, green beans, oven fresh rolls, etc.

When I got there, we opened the ale.  Mmmm, good.  We chatted and opened presents, mine to her not so many since I'd gotten her the cable package and I am really not into shopping for other people, hers to me more plentiful and silly.  A bad sweater, a package of cashews from Spain (really very good, actually), cookies, slippers (no kidding), and a box of Giorgio Armani shave/after shave/cologne.  Now I haven't worn cologne since the tenth grade, I think, but there it was.

"This is great.  Thanks mom."

I was already thinking about what I might buy myself tomorrow.

Then it was time to eat.  My mother is, I must say, one of the worst cooks in the world.  She has no sense of taste, I believe.  Nothing is ever seasoned properly (if at all) and everything is overcooked.  As was the turkey.  It was O.K., but it had no flavor other than the naturally foul taste of that dirtiest of birds.

"Where'd you buy the green beans," I asked?

"Publix."

"Something is wrong with them," I said, making a show of smelling those on my fork.

"They were frozen.  I mean they got frozen in the crisper.  I need to get a new refrigerator.  I've tried to change the settings, but everything freezes."

I picked up a sweet potato.  If fell apart.

We ate for awhile when my mother said, "Oh!  I forgot the rolls."

She went to the counter and opened a bag of rolls and put one on my plate.

"They're cold."

"Yea."

When I was just about finished, she said, "You didn't get any dressing."

"Great."

She put a big pile on my plate.  It was like mush.

"Let's open the champagne," I said.

Eschewing the store-bought pumpkin pie, I lay down upon her couch.  I was asleep in minutes.

An hour and a half later, I woke up.

"I don't sleep enough," I told her.  "I've been waking up at three o'clock in the morning."

I set about showing her how to use the "On Demand" feature of her DVR, and how to record shows.  She just looked at me and said, "Yea."

When I'd come over the day before, she had said, "The cable guy was able to get my t.v. to show everything across the whole screen.  I looked and saw people from another planet with wide heads and short bodies.

"What?"  I took the remote and changed the picture back.

Now she was telling me, "I want you to put the t.v. back so it is full screen."

"No," I told her.  I'm not doing that.  You want to watch people all stretched out?"

"I hate the black bands on the sides."

"Nope.  Nope nope nope nope nope."

And in a little while it was over and I was going home with my Armani cologne.  The light was beginning to fail.

Then it was done and gone.  I had only two days of it.  And no regrets.

The girl who had called on Christmas Eve had not done as she promised and called to wish me Merry Christmas.  There were none of the promised photos from The Prodigal Girl.  Everything was back to normal.

Maybe next year.