Sunday, September 13, 2015

Laughter

There is always laughter when I visit my parents.  Much of it centers around Mother's bodily functions.  Weird, I know, but she initiates it.  As I have said before, she has this child-like laughter.  Yesterday when I walked in, laughing was the first thing we did. 

When I walked into the kitchen, Dad was at the counter with a plastic Walmart-type bag--the kind that is killing our environment.  When I asked him what he was doing, he replied, "I'm taping it."

"What?!"  I asked incredulously. 

"I'm taping it.  We go through too many here to throw it away because of holes."

He was referencing, of course, the bags needed for my mother's hygiene needs, to put it delicately.

I shook my head as I walked into the former dining room-turned-her-room.  I greeted her, "You two are a mess.  It's obvious you grew up during the Depression."

Then, I noticed a new "covered" trash can by her bed.  "Why did you get that?" I inquired.

"Because we smelled the other one too much," was her and Dad's response almost simultaneously.

The "old" one was an old shredder whose mechanism had broken.  They used that as a trash can as I do my old broken one.  When I asked Dad where that one was, he replied, "It's in the back bedroom as a trash can."

We laughed, and so we started the day laughing over Mother's bodily functions and the ingenuity borne from being a child in the Depression.  If you are, you improvise, you make do. 


Before I left, she told me I would have to write a story about this.  Last week when I read them this entry, here, about making memories, she laughed, Dad stonily kept his emotions in check, but I broke down, and she offered me a tissue.  I expected her to be the one most upset.  She asked for a printout of it, so that is what I am doing next.

Then, it will be off to see what today's visit brings.  And I will start taping my bags.

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