In recent days, Peter has told his mother that it's okay to call every day. She coming up against the doldrums of summer. My theory is that between Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, she's got events coming up on the horizon she can look forward to, but during the summer, it's just one long stretch of being reminded how little your older children care about you.
One mean trick Peter's sister plays on his mother is telling her that they're going to invite her to stay over soon. In my mother-in-law's vocabulary, "soon" is synonymous with "this weekend." So several weeks ago, she turned down an invitation to her grandson's bride's wedding shower in order to go to her daughter's house. And because she told Peter that she was going to Long Island that weekend, he made no plans to visit. By the way, did I ever mention that she NEVER gets invited to do anything? So the one time this millennium she got invited to something, she turned it down to keep herself free just in case her daughter just happened to feel like having her over.
So when she called that Saturday and Peter said, "I thought you weren't home this weekend," she got extremely agitated and a pus-filled vitriolic tirade flew out of her body and Peter was all, "I was gonna come by and see you, but now I'm not. Good. Bye." Okay, he didn't verbally say it because he's too nice to, but those were the undertones.
These past few days she's been leaving messages on our answering machine that go like this:
"Peter? Are you there? Are you there? Why you no call me? Are you okay? Okay...."
When he tells her that we're EXTREMELY BUSY, I don't think she gets it. So I told him today that he should bring her over here where she can sit in the one crevice that is not overtaken by boxes while I paint and he organizes his office, just so she can fully comprehend what he means by WE ARE BUSY.
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