YOUR Crazy Mother …

The Backward Bathroom Door Incident.

This story requires the introduction of two new characters, both of whom will play important roles in upcoming posts, so I’ll take a little time and introduce them properly. These characters would be my grandmother and grandfather, Myrna’s parents. My grandmother, in particular, requiring a bit of development, because she had her own distinct sets of nuttiness, some of which Myrna inherited either genetically (God help you dear sister — I dodge the genetic bullet on account of my being adopted) or were learned (God help us both). Anyhow, on to the character sketches…

Glen and Elva, my grandparents

Both of my grandparents were born and raised on smallish farms in rural Utah. Both suffered and survived the great flu pandemic of 1918. Both suffered and survived the Great Depression. They lived in Salem, Utah until the mid-​​seventies when they bought a house and moved several blocks away from our house in suburban Salt Lake City. My sister and I had the benefit of being very close to our grandparents, both in proximity and emotionally. My sister and I lived with them for about six months while my mother was recovering from her car/​train accident. I was particularly close to my grandmother. When I decided to become a musician, I was at her house every day, practicing on her piano.

Glen:

Glen was a mountain of a man, soft spoken, but someone you would not want to mess with or worse, disappoint. He was gentle, kind and quietly loving to his grandchildren. He may have moved to the suburbs, but he continued to raise a large garden every year, which he cared for fastidiously. It was always a pleasure to visit him while he worked in the garden, picking various fruits and vegetables with him. Sharing a fresh tomato with a little salt in the waning summer stands out in my memories still. The Depression left him with a lasting fear of being bankrupted so he was a saver almost to a fault. When my uncle was figuring out his estate after his death, he found numerous bank accounts at numerous banks, none with too much money in them. If one bank failed, grandpa was not going to be caught with his pants down. He had a large collection of ancient tools and fancied himself a handyman, capable of fixing or building anything. His workbench was a kind of chaotic wonderland for a precocious boy such as myself. His workbench and shed contrasted sharply with Elva’s everything-​​in-​​its-​​place mindset.

All of these sensibilities, of frugality, self-​​reliance and libertarianism, extended to his home repair and remodeling. He tackled every project immediately with a ‘reduce, reuse, repurpose’ utilitarian mentality. While his constructions worked, they were not aesthetically pleasing exactly nor would a building inspector be all too approving of some of his ad hoc solutions. Regardless, he was a prolific builder and fixer-​​upper doing many a project on both his house and our house. His handiwork surrounds me to this day.

Elva:

Where to start with Elva… She was an enigma, wrapped in paradox, wrapped in OCD-​​ishness, wrapped in fierce loyalty and grandmotherly charm. She was the mold from which Myrna was cast. Elva’s loyalties never veered far from the genetic, familial line. God help the in-​​laws, the husbands and wives of her children. That motley crew was tolerated but always suspect. Her children were above reproach and probably could walk on water if need be. Glen kept a tight leash on Elva, both financially and politically. He tempered her, softened her. He kept her mouth and her poisoned pen in check which was probably a fulltime job. When Elva would go on a particularly vitriolic bender though, he had a secret weapon — he would nod and agree with her appraisals of the general despicableness of so-​​and-​​so, reach subtly into his pocket and turn his hearing aid to the silencing, tranquil off position. All this is not to say that she wasn’t a loving matriarch, because she was. It’s just that her love would sometimes kick in to protection mode and scorch the earth around those she cared for.

As for her more mundane foibles, she was obsessive to say the least. Leaving the house was always an extended ritual for her. There was an elaborate mental checklist requiring double confirmation before the door was triple locked. The stove figured prominently on this list. I can still hear “off, off, off, off” — the mantra for the four stove burners as she physically verified their non-​​operation. It had to be said out loud to keep the fiery demons that inhabited the stove in check during her absence. Throwing anything away was likewise a detailed, multifaceted maneuver. Everything that went into the can in the house had to be cleaned; it had to be condensed to its smallest possible dimensions. Steel cans became carefully nested Russian dolls. A cereal box became a tiny, intricately constructed cube of solid cardboard before hitting the bin.

Sadly, as she aged her mind started to go. In her younger days she was ferociously intelligent, but after my grandfather’s death she declined rapidly. It was quite difficult to witness the demise of her intellect, doubly so because she knew herself that she had lost something that was such an integral part of her personality. Along with this, during the last quarter of her life, she became the incredible shrinking woman, getting tinier and tinier each year — a little gnome of a woman — which was both endearing and disturbing.

Shortly after my grandfather’s death, my mother’s role of caregiver, babysitter and general boy Friday greatly expanded. Grandma was still living in her house (alone) and my mother was constantly checking on her. Typically, mom went by about three or four times a day. As is often the case, the roles of parent and child reversed, something I dread myself but can already see the sprouts of that seed blooming. Anyway, grandma became more and more dependent on Myrna, I suspect more dependent than was really necessary. It was a way for her to keep a connection to humanity, and a way to extract a daughter’s debt to a mother. Elva actually told Myrna on more than one occasion that Myrna OWED her this care giving debt.

Not the actual villain, but a close facsimile thereof.

On to the Story:

With all this groundwork, let me just say that a “perfect storm” was brewing, one that required all of the idiosyncrasies of the players to materialize.

Elva continued her “mission creep” on Myrna. Myrna not only allowed it but dove head first into Elva’s deep, deep pool of need. Myrna had needs too. She needed to flex her motherly tendencies that had been atrophying as Steph and I elaborated our adult lives. Soon, grandma decided that she could no longer bath herself. Myrna, bless her heart, began this uncomfortable, disturbing task.

Grandma’s bathroom (they both had their own bathrooms and bedrooms, sensibly) was an experiment in monochrome run amok. It was violently lavender; the fixtures, the walls, the linens, everything was lavender. I think it even smelled of lavender. It was an amazingly overpowering example of muted interior design taken to absurdity. The tub was, unfortunately, not very large and made the ablution of the needy gnome quite difficult logistically. Grandpa’s bathroom, however, was only a half bath and had no tub or shower. When the grandparents moved into the house, he determined that the lavender citadel was just not acceptable for his uses. Actually, I suspect that grandma didn’t want a dirty, stinky man messing with her meticulously maintained and delicately appointed retreat. Thus, a room in the basement was annexed for grandpa’s shower.

It was a largish room, with the shower kind of plopped unceremoniously in the corner. It was a perfect place to bath grandma. It had plenty of room. It had no close-​​quartered cabinets. It allowed for a bathing chair. Perfect! Well, as you probably have already imagined, it wasn’t quite perfect. There was one problem. For some mysterious reason, grandpa put the bathroom door on backwards, or more to the point, the doorknob was on backward — that is, the lock was on the outside, not the inside. It had been this way for many years without incident, but I suspect you can foresee the potential for a problem here, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.

One afternoon, Myrna went over to give Elva her bath. She began the preparations, which from all accounts required the planning and execution a military invasion might. Replacement clothing has to be selected, prepped and placed. Linens likewise needed diligent attention, not to mention, soaps, conditioners, lotions and other sundry toiletries. As fate would have it, grandpa was a little more sensible and a couple of hooks on the door sufficed to handle his accoutrements. This would just not do for the women though. They just couldn’t fit all their stuff on the hooks and there were no counters in the bathroom and, obviously, they couldn’t just throw everything on the concrete floor, everything would get dirty and/​or wet. Naturally, they decided to put everything on a little table that sat just outside the bathroom door.

As Myrna recounts it, they closed the door (someone might see in and glimpse grandma in her naked splendor — a shiver runs through me). They went about their business, wrapping things up as quickly as feasible, because it was quite cold in the basement where the bathroom was. Myrna then went to get the towel from the table outside the room. Oh no, the door won’t open! Double oh no, the door is locked!! Triple oh no, the lock is on the outside!!!

So, let me paint you a picture. We have the naked, wet gnome and the now panicked Myrna. We have no clothing, no towels, seemingly nothing to de-​​naked-​​ify the naked, dripping old woman. We have Myrna, in minimal clothing, a tee-​​shirt and pants, which also are quite wet. We have an impenetrable barrier trapping our heroines in a chilly basement with little hope of attracting rescue — a grim, grim picture indeed.

Then began a long, long adventure into terror. Myrna decided that Elva just couldn’t be naked, after all it’s against Nature and God to be naked. The only thing to put on Elva was the bathroom rug. It was one of those furry, rubber-​​backed affairs. This inopportune trip into experimental haute couture must have made quite a scene, it hurts to imagine it. The thought of it all just scares the hell out of me on a multitude of levels. Anyhow, grandma clothed, the business of escape began. The only remotely useful tool at their disposal was a nail file. Myrna began to frantically manicure the door out of existence, the prospects of success were dim to say the least. The thing is, if she had even a slight mechanical inclination, she probably could have used the file as people are seen using credit cards to open the door, but alas, Myrna and physics are on opposing shores of a great ocean. She scratched and scratched and scratched at the door. One hour turned into two hours, which turned into three hours, which turned into four hours. By this point, things were beyond desperate and, quite frankly, seriously dangerous. Elva was slowly freezing. It did not occur to them to warm her up with the hot water readily available from the shower, but hindsight is 20/​20 as they say.

Myrna must have been at her wits end. I’m sure that Elva wasn’t exactly a trooper about the whole thing either. I’m sure there were recriminations. I imagine a huge gamut of emotions played out in the largish room in the basement between the two women.

Well, if you have ever watched the TV series “Bewitched,” you are familiar with the Mrs. Kravitz character. Every neighborhood has at least one if not more of these nosy neighbors. Thankfully, a Mrs. Kravitz lived next to Elva. As afternoon turned into night, this neighbor astutely marked that Myrna’s car was parked in Elva’s driveway and had been for many hours. She also marked that no lights came on in Elva’s house as the day faded. This was odd, really odd. One of both Elva’s and Myrna’s daily rituals is the evening turning on of the lights. Several lamps about the house are strategically turned on each and every night to keep the burglars, rapists and murderers at bay (I’m not kidding.) Mrs. Kravitz knew something was not right. The anti-​​criminal force-​​field had not gone up on Elva’s house, something was definitely amiss.

To cut this short, she then went over, knocked and knocked and knocked with no response. The red flags were in full bloom. She then retrieved her husband and his tools and the break-​​in commenced. Once they got in the house (which they say was quite an ordeal) they heard the whimpers of the two women. Myrna could barely talk from yelling and yelling for help. Elva was sluggish and incoherent.

All’s well that ends well, I suppose. Neither suffered permanent damage. The bathroom door was quickly refitted to prevent another fiasco. The planets aligned to put them in this situation and then aligned again to get them out of it. Things could have gone very differently. I find it very ironic that two people that take so many precautions to protect themselves were defeated by such a simple mistake. Their paranoia and compulsiveness failed them when they needed it most. I am, however, grateful that Allah, Baby Jesus and the Three Sisters allowed the entangled to be disentangled. I am so glad that obituary’s writing was avoided, though it would have been fittingly freakish.