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Hoping not to wake anyone, I pulled my mother’s car into her driveway in quiet deceleration.  Something didn’t seem altogether right.  I wasn’t expecting to see my son pacing around the “borrowed” car in nervous concentration and I was more than a little surprised to see my mother’s head poking out the passenger side window at an odd angle.

I gently extracted myself from the car.  “What’s wrong? “ I whispered, my voice carrying through the still air of the night.  I squinted down at the dimly lit clock on my cell phone noting the time.  Nearing midnight.

“Grandma’s stuck in the car,” he droned, as if this was something that happened every day.

“She’s stuck in the car?  What do you mean she’s stuck in the car?  How did she get stuck in the car?”  I asked, as if these were the only words I knew.

“She can’t get out,” he explained, “We can’t find the keys.”   He shook his head and his expression leaked, You’re a moron, what’s not to understand here?

“Oh, I see,” I dithered stupidly.  I’m not normally so slow on the uptake, but at that moment, my mind was apparently folding in on itself.  I couldn’t find the connection between the lost key and the ability to get out of the car, and I seemed to be the only one who was confused.

Her head swung back and forth between us while we talked before she slid herself back through the window and began fiddling with things inside the car.  We’d been talking over her as if she was invisible and I thought I saw her glaring at us through the tinted glass.  I looked over at my son again.  Apparently something had gone missing between his brain and his mouth because he seemed to have nothing else to offer by way of explanation.  He resumed his pacing.  I continued probing while he raised his hands in the air, waggling them at me dismissively like I’d just had a lobotomy.

Yes, I was confused and I cocked my head from left to right like a parrot, and continued my parade of questions.  Annoyed, he mirrored my movements, before booming with the force of a Town Crier, “We can’t open the door without the key,” and then he went on with the arm waggling thing again while muttering something about alarms, neighbors, and noise. “And we need to get Grandma out.”

Perhaps he noticed the vacancy in my eyes, the lights-out-nobody’s-home placard I had tacked to my forehead, because he  was now speaking in italics, enunciating every syllable.  “We need a flashlight to find the keys mom, could you find one please?  I don’t know where one is.”

“Okay,” I lamely offered up into the suddenly rising tension, “I’ll try to find one.”

Mom tipped her head and slid it through the partially opened window again, “I need my phone too honey.”

I was so lost.  “For what?”  I didn’t wait for an answer, “Here use mine,” I offered, placing it into her hand through the window.

She handed it back and rolled her eyes.  “I need mine,” she insisted, “I can’t remember his number; it’s programmed into my phone.”

“Whose number?”

“Richard’s.   I’ll call him and he can bring another set of keys.”

I still wasn’t getting the whole key thing and I somehow sensed that this whole episode may have been brought on by some mishap of my son’s.  A rush of panic fluttered across my face.  That and she had on what I believe to be called a “duster” you know those frumpy house dress thingies?  I found it disturbing, for company anyway.

“You can’t call him, look how you’re dressed, and look what time it is.”  I tapped the face of my phone offering proof.   She stuck her arms through the window waving me off in a go on silly girl; just get me my phone gesture.  My mind began skidding off to some distant plane of consciousness and I was now staring off into space considering how a “duster” got its name in the first place.

Then my son’s words sliced through the air again, breaking my semi fugue state.  “The flashlight mom, we need the flashlight.”  And there was the enunciating thing again, and now shooing motions as if I was some errant child being sent off to my room.

“And my phone,” my mother piped up again, her neck and arms still wrenched through the window.  Her tone was sweet, calming, as if she expected fireworks to ignite at any moment from the powder kegs of either my son or myself.

In the glow of the street lamp, I noticed how pretty she looked.  I took a moment trying to reign in my obviously drifting mind.  This was about keys, not potential photo ops, and she was starting to look concerned.

I held my hands palms down, fingers splayed, trying to smooth the air in a placating fashion.  “We’ll get you out somehow mom,” I lied, hoping I looked every inch the part of someone who was actually in control of the situation.

I felt a headache unfurling over my right eye.  Maybe it was the bump on the head I got at the amusement park, or maybe it was hunger, as my lunch had blown off into the bay during a picnic.  Whatever the case, I moved slowly, my right leg feeling somewhat loose, unhinged, from the little race thingy I ran the previous morning.  I was concerned that it might fall off.

Like a mantra, I kept repeating, flashlight, phone, flashlight phone, hoping to remember what I was in there for.  I walked past a pile of laundry and I have no idea why, but I reached down, scooped it up and tossed it in.  Flashlight, phone, flashlight phone, I kept repeating to myself as I poured a bit of soap into the filling tub.

Something was wrong with me, really.  Electrolyte imbalance or something.  Possibly I had sweat away my IQ, but I carried on searching; everywhere…..

…….After turning over the last couch cushion, I stopped the ridiculous flashlight search and turned to go back outside.  When I got back to the car, my mother was punching numbers into her cell phone and my son was holding the flashlight pointing it inside of the car, fiddling with things on the door.  This all happened while I was searching in vain for both, with vast gaps of unaccounted for time.

Netting ourselves in unusual spots seems to be a family hobby but I believed we were reaching new heights of absurdity because no one seemed to think this was out of the ordinary.  Standing next to the car, I started to laugh.  It had a ripple effect, spreading like a rogue wave.  While hee hawing, I tried to stop her from calling her friend, but she already had.  I really thought we could handle it ourselves.

Right.  Handle it ourselves.  When we were now laughing like a trio of drunken seals.

Anyway, somehow the keys were found inside of the car, the alarms were disengaged, or something like that, but I still haven’t figured the damn connection.  Strange wiring maybe.  Anyway, mom got out of the car.  Then like magic, Richard pulled up, a twinkle in his eye, a smile on his face, and everyone began chatting as if we were at some normal midnight gathering.  God love a man with a sense of humor.  The same man who drove two hours to exchange the suitcase I had accidentally brought back from the airport – belonging to someone who lives in Dubai – and returning with the one that actually belonged to me.  Sweet sweet man.

And then I looked down, and to my horror, I realized I had run my little late night errand with my t-shirt on inside out and backwards, the tag flapping in the front like a cute little flag.  How stylish of me.  But then I also noticed that, Praise the Lord, nobody really seemed to notice, or they did,  and it just somehow struck them as normal – for me anyway.

Busy

Visible

to the less connected,

the D list.

You speak in sotto voce,

“I am here; see me, but leave me be.”

Secretly Available to the select,

the keepers of the symbol,

the knowers of its meaning.

Conspicuous absence,

otherwise, you’d be Invisible.

Copyright, Sharie Peters Parker, 2010, all rights reserved