theology&geometry

[Bit of backstory: Between my mother and my father, four deer have met their fates at the bumper of a Turner vehicle in the past four years. I don't know how or why; that's just part of living and driving out in the middle of nowhere, I guess. So this morning when we left the house at 4:30, it was pitch dark out, and we were reasonably paranoid about psycho deer running in out front of us and smashing up my new car, despite the supposedly deer-repellent noisemakers my dad mounted to my car's grill the day I bought it. Sure enough, between Saltillo and Nashville, we saw one deer leap across the road in front of us, two deer grazing along the side of the road, one suicidal rabbit who ran out in front of us, a stupid cat poised to take off across the highway, three coyotes alongside the interstate (two of which were already roadkill) and two wild turkeys. No animals were harmed in the trip, so stop fucking calling me, PETA.]

On the way home, my mom was gazing out the window, when she turned to me and the following conversation unfolded.

Mom: You know, I would think you should just be able to look into the woods and see deer everywhere. Wouldn’t you think so?

Me: [somewhat skeptical, but polite] I don’t know. Would you think that?

Mom: Well, yeah. Wouldn’t you? Anyway, we should just go running out into the woods so they’d have a chance to hit us for once.

:::

The good news is that the ultrasound of my mom’s kidney seems to show just a regular old cyst with no bad intentions for my mom. We’re relieved, obviously, but I’m skeptical that a cyst can just exist peacefully without starting to wreck shit out of boredom on down the line. So I’m keeping those digits crossed. Thanks for the good vibes, everyone.

:::

After we got out of the doctor’s office, we enjoyed a $30 breakfast feast of griddle cakes, spicy green pepper and chicken omelets, scrambled eggs, fruit, wheat toast, and bacon at Noshville. It was incredible. I’m still full.

After stuffing our sleep-deprived faces, I drove mom around and she pointed out all the places around Nashville she lived when she was a kid and a young adult. Turns out she lived for about a year roughly in Lesley‘s ‘hood. Roughly. And her old house where she went into labor with my sister over on Harvard off of West End is in the cutest freaking neighborhood I may have ever seen.

She also showed me where she had her first kiss when she was fourteen and where the boy, Eddie, worked before it was razed and turned into a strip mall. She said he snuck a kiss from her. I bet she’s being modest. Hee hee.

:::

I just woke up from an hourlong nap. I feel pretty ragged. I have heartburn. I’m going back to bed. This time for a few hours, if I can.

I’m headed to Saltillo in a bit, if I can ever get around to putting some clothes on and throwing some crap in an overnight bag. Tomorrow I’m taking my mom to Vanderbilt to the doctor. I’m sure she’d prefer it if I didn’t spread her medical secrets all over the internet, so I’ll just say that a couple of weeks ago, doctors found a cyst on her kidney and she’s got to have it checked out. They think it’s benign, but there are hoops to jump through before we know that for sure.

She’s doing a bang-up job of not acting worried, but she and I are so much alike that I know she’s worried because I am. But I’ve got all my digits crossed.

I’m looking forward to a day full of Fran Moments. When we get together, we’re like a whirling dervish of crazy.

I had a quintessential Fran Moment today. It was almost a carbon re-enactment of the seminal Fran Moment, which happened several years ago at the (now closed) Shell station just off the bridge in Savannah.

I was at the Circle K, gassing up the Purple Pump Guzzler (seriously, cost me upwards of $40 to fill up — a first for me — and it’s getting a paltry 19 miles to the gallon), when I went in for coffee (I think I might actually be birthing an addiction to coffee, but only in the very early hours, and when it can have lots of sugar and cream and, if I’m lucky, chocolate flavoring) and a sausage biscuit. I paid, came back out, got back in the car, started it, shifted into drive, and went probably a third of a foot before I remembered that the gas nozzle was still in the car. My face flushed red, I looked around to see if anyone had noticed, turned the car off, got out, restored the nozzle to the pump, cringed at the pump’s message to me — “Printer error. Please see cashier.” — because it meant I’d have to go inside and face the people who probably were watching me, thinking, That crazy bitch better not drive off with that gas hose! So I said screw it, got back in the car, and tried to drive away with as much dignity as I could feign.

This is a quintessential Fran Moment because my mother, one fateful day many years ago, drove away with a gas hose still stuck in her Impala (the big pimpmoble kind they used to make). Luckily, those hoses are idiot-proof, and are designed to break away fairly easily if tugged on pretty hard. I think mom told me that it took her several years to get up the courage to go back to that Shell station. I can certainly understand.

My mom would probably kill me if she knew I was telling all her funny/embarrassing stories to the internet. But I think she’d also get a kick out of it.

Update: I texted this story to my mom, and she texted back that last night she drove away from a gas station with the gas cap banging away on the side of the car. Ha! Our DNA is practically identical.

Someone sneezed and I said, “Good night.”

WTF?!

My mom called me yesterday afternoon when she and my dad arrived in Gatlinburg — they’re up there for a few days to hear a timeshare pitch so they can stay at a nice chalet for free — to tell me that from their balcony they can see the little chairs that go over the road.

She was so excited. I was cracking up.

See, there’s a hilarious family tale that explains all this (well, hilarious to the family). It even has video. If I could find it and transfer it from VHS to YouTube video, I would.

Back when I was a junior in high school, my family and Phil and I took a trip down to Atlanta for a few days (I think my mom, an RN, had to take some sort of certification test there) and then up through the mountains in Tennessee for a few more. We stayed in some little cabin just off the main drag. It snowed. We played putt-putt golf and toured the Ripley’s museum. As we were leaving town, my mom was filming everything around us, telling it all goodbye.

When we passed under the chairlift that took tourists up atop a big hill (I hesitate to call it a mountain), my mom said, “Goodbye, little chairs that go over the road!”

That moment — immortalized in film — became an inside joke in my family, and has become a reference point for what I like to call “Fran moments.”

They are moments of supreme silliness or airheadedness, when you blurt something nonsensical or misunderstand or misconstrue the obvious. They are moments of quiet hilarity made funny by your own amusement by yourself. They are, in short, what makes my mother herself and what makes me a lot like her.

Turns out that while I had been calling these moments “Fran moments,” my mom’s co-workers had also been using that phrase to describe when she’d do or say something silly at work. Talk about synchronicity.