Remains of the day

 

So I'm thinking mom might have the solution to getting rid of Donald Trump.

"Send him home to Mount Vernon, for Christ's sake."  

Watching Wednesday's impeachment process was like watching sausage being made. Not as distasteful, but every bit as tedious. After a while, mom was turning scarlet with anger: at Trump, at politicians in general, at the slog that is the Democratic process. Thus the idea of sending the only president in our history impeached twice to the home of George Washington. 

Where there isn't even a golf course.

It's been an eventful couple of weeks in Tiramisu Square. Let's start with Jan. 6. As thousands of angry white goons tore through the Capitol, mom and I and my sister were spending the day in far less consequential but regular pursuits: lunch, grocery store, dollar store. When I checked my phone and saw that all hell was breaking loose in Washington, mom was finishing up her mani and pedi.

So regular life went on, as it always does, during one of the worst days in American history. A few days later, mom had more to say over the phone, which is to her as Twitter is to Trump: namely oxygen.

"They said he can't use his tweeter now," she informed me, barreling right through that malaprop regarding the social media banishment of a philanderer. And since I am one of the recipients of her calls who isn't up at 6 a.m., when she starts her phone chain, the news was already old. 

She has yet to let go of all this: the president, the "damn COVIC," the price of getting her nails done.  ("They have a lot of guts charging that much!") 

Damn it all. But she wasn't finished. On impeachment day, she wondered: "What am I supposed to tell my grandchildren about all this?" 

She could start by explaining that Mount Vernon isn't in Florida and doesn't have its own spa. They, in turn, could educate her about why "that K9 West" is popular enough to have run for president. 

As her anger cooled enough on Wednesday to spend some leisurely time at Bed, Bath and Beyond, one of those grandchildren called my mother to say she missed her, and, "Could we make stuffed peppers when you come to our house?" 

An ordinary call, an ordinary request. Our kids know Grandmom will always answer her phone, will always come when they ask. 

Perhaps that call wasn't so ordinary. When kids can watch on their phones as a police officer gets dragged down the steps of the Capitol, as a loser wearing a Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt helps defile the Capitol, as the president continues to deny his own culpability for the mess, maybe it isn't so ordinary after all. Maybe my niece just needed some normalcy back in her life.

And the stuffed peppers couldn't hurt. Grandmothers, after all, can feed the soul. 

 




  


       

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