Suavemente

It is raining and raining and raining and raining. Where is spring? Where are short sleeves? The cherry blossoms are being blown forcibly off the trees in squishy swirls of pink and white and the tulips out in our front yard are all pinchy and closed up, like, no thanks dude, we’ll just huddle up until someone looks at a calendar and figures out what time of year it’s supposed to be.

My mom is visiting for a long weekend. She got in yesterday afternoon and we immediately went to Carta de Oaxaca for dinner, thereby crossing off one of the items on my list. She’s spending the morning at the salon and we’ll be going shopping this afternoon, I’m sure, because that’s what we always do when she comes to visit. Neither of us really enjoys shopping all that much so I’m not exactly sure why we do it every time. I’ve been giving away all my clothes lately and I’m trying very hard not to spend too much money on non-New-Zealand-related stuff, but bam, she gets into town and all of a sudden I’m like, hey, Mom, we need a bunch of trinkets! Let’s go to the trinket store! Does everyone do that with parents they don’t see very often? I surely don’t think that money is love (although sometimes I think money is very strong like) but I tell you, I dig on giving my mom really good presents. I have something of a knack for it. She’s carrying the bag I got her for Christmas this weekend and is wearing a sweater I got her another time and I know, I know she’s just doing it to make me happy, but dang, it works. (She also bought me a very cute wallet last night, just to up the ante I think, and though I retaliated with a bar of
L’Occitane Milk Soap I fear that I might have to show her who’s boss by buying lunch today and brunch tomorrow, too, which will also conveniently knock off another list item. Although I think when it comes to brunch I should be more flexible about list item repeats.).

Last night after dinner we were slightly at odds for what to do. We’d thought of taking an evening walk but it was cold and rainy and twenty-five years in Florida have thinned my mother’s hardy Midwestern blood so we thought we’d stay inside, but Treasa and John were watching baseball and so we couldn’t watch a movie and I’d had a sort of hard day at work and was feeling a little out of sorts. I was talking about my difficulties in deciding what to bring with me on the trip, a subject that is never far from my mind for very long. You think you have a pretty comfortable relationship with your stuff until you have to decide a) what amount of it you’re going to leave in the house as you evacuate for yet another hurricane or b) when you decide that you’re going to go to the other side of the world with only one bag and that you will be both considering getting scuba certified and going on job interviews, possibly in the same week. She got me a bunch of travel-related items for my birthday and while I was showing them to her I came upon something in the pile that I received as a gift at my party, from a currently unknown benefactor.

I was reading the instructions for this miraculous new product in Spanish and French, because that is a sure source of hilarity in any situation that needs a little livening up, to read instructions in a language not your first. I wish I could remember the exact directions, but part of them were to squeeze out all the air from the magical vacuum seal “suavemente.” “Suavemente!” we cried, testing it out, kneeing the bag to get every last bit of air out. “Suavemente!” Mom started giving me fake instructions in Spanish and I’d nod my head and do as she said seriously and then she’d go “¡Hágalo…suavemente!” and it was so funny, eight o’clock on a Thursday night with my mom in the cloud room, giggling over packing techniques and slipping each other little presents. Whatever I am, I know I come by it honest.