Mom & Me Five Archive

...the thought of writing here, let alone the truncated activity of it (I've got three very recently begun posts languishing in "Drafts") has made me a little sick to my stomach, so I haven't.
    This is not to say that things have been going badly or have been upsetting, or that I'm experiencing another wave of caregiver burnout. This is not to say much of anything, really. Just, well, the doing and the writing of the doing are not, at this time, comfortably coexisting.
    Mom is well. The cats are well. I am well. We've had some brief snowfalls. One of our neighbors who was out taking pictures of our most significant snowfall of the season agreed to take some pictures of our house from the inside out so I could, hopefully, show, here, what the view is from a Christmas card. Not sure when those pictures will be available. Or if.
    Yesterday, my barber (I use a barber because they are trained in angular cutting) talked me out of having myself practically scalped (I wanted to remove much of the black cherry coloring I've been using over the last few years and lately attempting to grow out). She also gave me some good reasons to recolor my hair...and gave me a spectacular display cut. Her essential advice was (may the gods bless this woman...I should have my hair cut more often): "You need a change. Bleaching yourself out isn't the change you need. Consider a cruise, instead." I went home, broke out a package of the coloring I use and discovered, she's right. I haven't been looking the way I prefer to imagine myself, lately. Now, I do. Someone, please, tie my hands behind my back if I should decide to remove my many and varied earrings.
    I've been reading, economics.
    My mother has been watching, every day for the last four days, a copy of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner that I purchased on the cheap, on a hunch, the day her repetitive watching began. It's a movie I vaguely remember seeing when it came out in the late 1960's. I think we've tuned into it a couple of times on TV in the last several years. I purchased it on a hunch and, sure enough, the hunch paid off. I have a habit of leaving the DVD containers on Mom's TV table when we watch movies, in case she wants to look at them. Each day we've watched this movie, it's because the container was still on her table, she noticed it, asked to watch it and watched it as though it was new. I'm not yet having a M*A*S*H reaction to the movie. Instead, with each viewing, I've actually attended to most of it, discovered the luminosity of Beah Richards' performance and added a couple of moments from the movie to my list of all time favorite movie speeches and moments:

• Christina Drayton's (Katharine Hepburn's), "Don't speak, Hillary...just go," moment.
• Mary Prentice's (Beah Richard's) "What happens to men when they grow old?" speech, which, unfortunately, is not included in the previous link to memorable quotes from the movie.

    I vaguely remember, when I first viewed the movie, not understanding what all the fuss was about; taking offense at Joanna Drayton's statement that, upon marrying John Prentice she would become "important, too"; taking offense that, when Joanna Drayton excitedly begins to tell her mother how happy she is, without having any idea of what her news is, Christina Drayton says, "Do I know him?"
    Although interracial/intercultural tension certainly existed on Guam at the time we were there and had begun to explode as we left, it did not include a wary eye cast on interracial marriage. Guam was a haven for U.S. citizens involved in interracial marriages. My belated understanding, after we left Guam, was that many moved there, and to Hawaii, purposely in order to escape comment and notice. As well, many interracial/intercultural marriages did not necessarily include a Caucasian. They were so common that it was assumed that race was not an issue when it came to considering marriage. As well, Guam was ahead of the U.S. in regard to women in society and it was, then, generally (although, sometimes, not particularly) assumed that the most important event in a woman's life was not her marriage. Thus, the movie seemed to me, in 1967, unbelievably dated and my perception was a mainstream perception within the community in which I lived.
    The movie remains, I am pleased to say, dated. It also contains some sparkling performances and was unusually well constructed, even to the background detail: In one late scene, for instance, when Christina Drayton is on the verge of braking the news to Joanna Drayton that Matt Drayton is about to disapprove of Joanna's and John's marriage, the aborted attempt is photographed against a statue of what I assume is the multiply armed Kali, variously interpreted as both a creator and destroyer.
    Hmmm...I think I've written most of the blurb I'll be entering for this movie over at the movie site, when I get around to including it.

    I'm feeling queasy. And, it's just about time to awaken The Mom.
    ...later. Possibly much...