Sundays were always phone call day. No matter where I was or what was happening that day I would do my best to make time, even if it was just a check in, to see how Mom was doing.
Mom lived with my step pop and half brother till the end of her days. They lived a strange life, my old man marking out his territory in the living room, and my forty some year old brother pretty much taking over the den and a spare bedroom. So that left my mom, who was fairly much an invalid by that time, to her quarters in the back part of the house. They each had their own television sets, which pretty much defined the social aspect of their desparity. Whatever it was that they shared outside of meals was never very clear to me. Whenever I called all I ever heard was bickering.
But our conversations, in the best of times, went from my weather to her health to food to film. I think that movies was the biggest and best thing, outside of new recipes tried and discovered, that helped keep my mother's life tied to mine. We could only talk about housekeeping and the kids for so long. I could only handle so much chat about medications and the numerous aches and pains that she suffered through. In the end we went back to the beginning, back to the thing we always shared, and that was a mutual love of movies.
My old man was not much of a movie head so that left me, and later on, for awhile, my brother, to fill in the void that my old man so conspiciously left open for us fill. Looking back I can't say that I minded much. As a boy it allowed me a bit of grace on the weekends to stay up as late as I could whenever there was a film on that was deemed to be important by my mom, sometimes important enough to stay up past midnight. It always meant Jiffy Pop and Dad's rootbeer for NBC's Saturday Night at the Movies. It meant always finding available quarters in the house jar for weekend matinees at the Broadway or the West Coast (50 cents for a double feature!), and it meant being given special dispensation for setting aside homework whenever a good afternoon flick came on. Movies were a language that we shared, a common tongue. We spoke old Hollywood, the Golden Age of Fox, MGM, Warners, RKO and Columbia. We talked endlessly about new releases, old classics available on various medias, films impossible to find, old favorites discovered at swap meets and specialty stores and pawn shops. It was something that we found to fight about, to care about, to share in a way that made all our other petty bickering disappear.
One memory in particular comes to mind that truly defines this joint no mans land of film we shared. I was down south on a mission of mercy visit. I went with the idea of spending two weeks at her house, filling up her freezer with food, doing errands with her, all that. My good intentions fell apart almost right away as she was a miserable patient to work with and a horrible eater as well. Nothing I could do or make had any virtue to it. We didn't so much fight as make each other totally and completely miserable. One evening after a particularly hard day she left me in tears. I packed up my cooking gear, rolled up my sleeping bag, packed my kit and prepared to leave that night. My mom, God bless her heart, laid down a bough of peace. She saw what her hard ways were doing to our relationship and how it was driving me out of the house. She had me come sit with her back in her room, and after a bit of a scuffle over selection, we settled into watching The Uninvited with Ray Milland.
What made that movie moment special was that we would always stop whatever it was that we were doing in order to watch that movie together. We would always pretend not know what the outcome of the movie was,we would always work through the mystery together as if it was the first time we ever watched it. I think I must have watched that movie a dozen times with her as a boy. We watched it together that night in a tired state of truce with my mother's weariness of life telling and wearing, with my ragged life up north laid aside and forgotten for the moment.
I left the next day to visit an old friend, and returned a day later as I prepared to leave the region. I came back with a key lime pie, hugged her and then left the Southland. We talked on the phone every Sunday after that, sometimes more, once in a awhile missing our scheduled chats.
Today is my mom's birthday: she would have been seventy six years old today. Tonight I will dig around in my film collection and find something that we might have both enjoyed,or, at the very least, had a great phone conversation about later on.
Happy birthday, Mom. Life is interesting, somedays even fine. I miss our talks, especially our movie chats. If I never told you before I just want to say thanks for Rear Window, The Great Escape, for Sunset Blvd, for Casablanca, for Bridge on the River Kwai, Samson and Dehlilah, Ben Hur, Flight of the Phoenix, Fort Apache, The Quiet Man, The Third Man, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The War of the Worlds and all the rest. Rest in peace, gal, you deserve it.
Action!
Movie review: The Uninvited:
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