MARY ANN FITZMORRIS

Astral projection needed While speeding home yesterday to be around when my kids returned from school, I thought, if this is really the Age of Aquarius, what happened to astral projection? That would be so handy! Grown Boomers need to bounce between caring for young children and old parents at the same time. Astral projection would be a handy thing. My mother has the notion that astral projection is real, since she often expects me to be in two places at one time. My parents are elderly, and neither of them drive, which must be tremendously frustrating for them. Luckily, they have produced enough children to spread around the duties of caring for them. One of my sisters oversees everything, including the procurement of prescription drugs, a full-time job in itself. Another does their shopping. The brothers visit often, and I take them for joyrides to get fast food. If we do not eat fast-food, my mother enjoys watching me consume a can of hot tamales. Growing up, I only preferred them to Vienna sausages and potted meat, things we were subjected to far too frequently. But she mistakenly thinks that I love that stuff. In truth, I never eat canned tamales except to thrill my mother. And thrilled she is. The only better service I provide is to supply illegal cookies. She keeps a stash of Big 60’s hidden from my sister. I smuggle them in and restock the waning supply. Sometimes dispatched for this single item, always when I am about to leave. My mother asks politely, “I have a few things I could use from the store. Do you think you have time to get them?” I look at the clock, knowing full well this trip to the store will definitely make me late. “Yes,” I say without hesitation, screaming naughty words only in my head. “Mom, you gotta give this to me earlier.” As suspected, the list contains only cookies. I blast through the store, speed to school and arrive late. This is not unusual. The children must hear me screech up to the office, because they greet me with the question, “Mawzy again?” “Quick” trips to the supermarket in the neighborhood of my youth are impossible. It’s the most crowded store I’ve ever entered. Besides that, I always see some nice lady I knew as a child. Recently, I walked through the parking lot, cellphone in hand, telling my husband I would meet a group of people for him at an absolutely inflexible time. He was skeptical. “No problem,” I assured him. The deli line was so long I went back four times. Milling about the cold cuts was a good friend of my parents, recently widowed. I knew I literally did not have a minute to chat, without forsaking my promise to my husband. So I did what any worm would do. I hid in the bread, trying to avoid her. After two minutes feeling incredibly ashamed I approached her. We spent the next 7.5 minutes updating 30 years of everyone in both our families. I nearly broke the sound barrier in the car on that trip home, and my heart raced even faster. Fortunately, shopping for my parents is not confined to that store. Once I arrived and my mother was sitting in a chair holding a sock, wanting me to go to a certain store and reproduce the exact style, color and weight of my father’s sock. My mother keeps a guillotine for people who return with the wrong thing from a shopping trip, so I knew it had to match exactly. This, too, would be a time consuming trip, even though the lady herself wasn’t along. After an hour, I crawled back to my mother reporting failure. Mom got into the car herself to match those socks. I would have preferred the guillotine. She fared no better in finding the right pair, but at least she was able to choose a new kind for herself. We sped back to her house. Amazing, but we made it back with some time to spare. I was thinking to myself that maybe I wouldn’t need astral projection on this trip after all. Smiling, she said, “I’ve got something for you.” She brought out a can of tamales.