Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Try
- Becoming Brenda Starr
- Off Beat
- Scattered
- That’s It
- So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
- The Spoon
- Sciatica
- Sweetheart
- A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
- However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
- After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
- As with everything in life, balance is key.
- Slow down, you move too fast…
- Yeah, I know. I have issues.
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
Cozy Mystery Writer?
I think I’ve mentioned here that my mother is reinventing herself. Or, I should say, I’m reinventing my mother.
I can’t remember when or why Mom stopped carrying a wallet in her purse, but let me tell you, those were the good old days. At some point, she must have decided the wallet weighed her down too much, probably when she went through a rash of compression fractures in her back.
Who knows? Since I was the one who took her to get a gazillion cortisone shots in various vertebrae over a few years there, I may have even suggested she ditch the dead weight. (I carried her purse.) It’s too many details for me to remember now. Water under the proverbial identity theft bridge, let’s call it.
Anyway, for a couple years, my mother had in her purse free floating ID cards, credit cards, Medicare and Blue Cross cards, and even her Social Security card. They all treaded dirty Kleenex in there with a tube of Chapstix, ancient bingo markers, and a coin purse embroidered with a slot machine made out of gaudy beads.
Finally, during one of her many hospital admissions, the clerk asked to see her medical cards. Mom couldn’t produce them to save her life, so I shoved one hand over and over into the fearful abyss of her purse, like a scuba diver short on air, until I came up with them. The clerk gave me a knowing look, fished around in her drawer, and handed over a substantial rubber band.
“Try this,” she said.
I gathered every card from the mire, banded them together, held them up for Mom’s approval, and said, “Behold, the power of elastic.”
Mom loved her knew “wallet.” Very simple, very easy. Of course, it was very simple and very easy to lose the whole packet at once, too. Or for the darned thing to be swiped. Either way. Because I’m a bit dramatic, I automatically jumped ahead to “swiped.”
Around six weeks ago, it came to my attention that Mom could no longer locate in her purse the banded set of cards. And so began another dark night of my soul—though Mom didn’t lose any sleep—during which I devoted half my waking hours and most of my nightmares to recreating her identity.
If you’ve had to replace a Social Security card recently, you know what I’m talking about. The entire process is now designed to ferret out illegals. I do believe the standard form is in Spanish, not that it matters. Even if it was English I was dealing with, the instructions are largely incomprehensible to anyone who doesn’t read the IRS tax code for enjoyment.
Let’s just say the SS wants LOTS of proof of the “Who’s your daddy?” sort before they’ll issue you a card. Cough up those original birth certificates and State IDs with picture, people! Mom said, “Why can’t they use my Ameristar card to prove who I am? My name’s on it…”
You see what I’m dealing with here, right? When you lose everything at once, you’ve got more than cancelling your credit cards to worry about. Every card-issuing institution wants proof of your identity in the forms of all the other stuff you lost at the same time. Yeah. It’s like that.
Amazingly, we made the most progress by going to the DMV first. Since she’d had a valid driver’s license which they could pull up in their system, they used their computer file on her to verify that yes, she really was the person she claimed to be, only having an even worse hair day than last time.
I told Mom—after we’d made grueling trips to the bank, the DMV, and the SS office—that we would miraculously find her old ID cards as soon as her new ones were ensconced in the wallet I bought her. That’s just the way life works, right?
Saturday evening, my sister dropped her back at her assisted living apartment after an afternoon of riverboat gambling. Mary KNOWS that Mom’s wallet with her new ID was zipped into her purse that night. Sunday morning, my sister Liz picked Mom up for brunch for Liz’s birthday. AMAZINGLY, Mom pulled out the rubber-banded set of cards from her purse like they’d never been missing at all! But, I’m sure you’ve guessed, her new wallet was gone.
“Someone at the facility is messing with you,” I told Mom last night, when I went to her apartment to search for the wallet. “They’re trying to see if you’re with the program. If you don’t report these incidents, they’ll ramp up their efforts and wipe out your bank account in one fell debit-card swoop.”
“You’re writing another novel, aren’t you?”
“I’m finishing the first one, Mom. I don’t know what you mean…”
“I see what’s going on here. You’re looking for a story. Well, there’s no story here. What if my old cards with the rubber band were in my purse this whole time?”
“Mom, you and Mary and I searched your purse dozens of times before I decided to spend the rest of my life getting you new cards. The old cards weren’t in your purse until sometime between 8:30 last night and 10:30 this morning. Someone sneaked in here while you were sleeping, unzipped your purse, replaced the cards they’d stolen from you weeks ago to ‘test’ you and then tiptoed out with your new wall—”
“Listen to yourself, Katy. You’re making all this up. Isn’t that what novelists do? You’re writing a—”
“Mom! Explain to me where you new wallet is and how the old cards got back in your purse.”
“I don’t know about the wallet. But I told you already that I FOUND the old cards.”
“You found them?” OK, I must have missed this part of her true confessions. “Where?”
“In my PURSE, Silly.”
Oh. Yeah.
“You can go home now,” she said, disgusted. “Case closed. Seems to me like you’ve got some typing to do.”
- I loved your post and have missed your writing so let me take this moment to welcome you back.
Poor Mom, but now she has double identity which should count for something. I mean now, could she really lose both sets next time?Posted by Maria on 03/31/07 at 12:55 PM - Hi. I really like your blog. Was wondering if you want to add it to my directory? Thanks Shelly
<a href="http://www.weblog-index.com">Weblog index</a>Posted by shelly on 04/02/07 at 11:43 AM - Maria--I am looking forward on Easter evening to making the rounds of all my fave bloggers!! You are one I miss! BTW, I have hidden one entire set of my mother's cards. I am pretty sure not even God could find them. :)
Shelly--Thank you. I will pass for now, though.Posted by Katy on 04/04/07 at 08:36 AM - No way! Mom found her cards! I had no idea!!! :)
Posted by Bridget on 04/22/07 at 07:06 PM
