How I Met My Mother Excerpt

An excerpt from How I Met My Mother

THE FOOD FIGHT

Mom's working at the greenhouse this afternoon, and my sister Trish is out with her friends.

So naturally I gotta invite all my new friends over.

You know, so I can prove how cool I am.

And the crew shows up en-mass, Jimmy, Andrew, Pierre-Luc and Jeremy, and they're ready to hang,

and there's lots to do here that you cant really do in the city,

like having huge bon-fires,

or wandering around the forest behind my place,

trying to find where I buried my Mike Vernon Calgary Flames jersey.

But instead of all that, we decide to make food.

Now I'm certainly not a chef, but I do have a specialty: grilled cheese sandwiches.

Usually made with way too much cheese and just soaked, like soaked in butter.

Gross.

(SFX – Frying Pan Sizzle)

Just, like, slather with butter (mimes slather),

insert the cheese,

slather some more butter (mimes slather)

throw butter into frying pan:

'cause the slathering wasn't enough,

throw in the sandwiches,

press down with spatula, super hard (mimes pressing down).

As I said, gross.

Andrew Higgins is probably the coolest of all of us.

Totally into violent movies, The Toxic Avenger, hardcore rap; like NWA, The Ghetto Boys, stuff like that.

Not the kind of stuff you'd want to play while Mom is home.

Good thing Mom is not home. Woooohooo.

Anyways, Andrew is making fun of one of Mom's doilys,

and I'm going along with it. Stupid doilys.

So of course, one of the sandwiches gets burned to a crisp and, well, the only course of action is to throw it straight at Pierre-Luc.

(mimes throwing)

(SFX - Splat)

Andrew: Haha! Right on the side of the head, perfect shot Patty

The melted cheese explodes not only over him but on Dan, Jimmy, Andrew, and, well, the doily.

“FOOD FIGHT”

(SFX – NWA – Fuck Tha Police Instrumental)

Pierre-Luc grabs one of the sandwiches and rips it in two, doubling his ammo,

Jimmy grabs the the mozzarella and cheddar,

Andrew opens the fridge and grabs a bright green salad bowl and is instantly equipped with an endless supply of ice-berg lettuce,

Dan grabs one of those lemon juice squeeze bottles,

while I make a beeline for the ham slices.

It's pandemonium,

The sandwiches get hurled across the kitchen,

one knocks over the milk,

the other catches Andrew in the temple – a small victory for Pierre-Luc, I'm sure.

Jimmy uses the big block of cheddar as a shield,

while ripping pieces of mozza off to use as projectiles,

Andrew reaches in to the green salad bowl and sort of Frisbees pieces of ice-berg lettuce at all of us, one by one.

My ham slices go every which way but onto it's indented target,

as one gets stuck on the ceiling

while another gets stuck on the window,

while yet another gets hurled up, into the swirling ceiling fan,

and sprays over the whole crew, kitchen, fridge, sink, like this sort of delicious shrapnel.

Game over.

After everyone leaves, and I frantically try to clean.

If I just clean the counter, the table and the walls, maybe Mom won't notice.

Except a piece of ham is still stuck to the window, maybe I can blame that on the dog.

And when Mom gets home, she notices right away, because all you gotta do is look in the fridge.

She had prepared a salad in that green bowl for tonight's dinner

And the cheese was intended for her home-made baked macaroni and cheese. Mom: One day, Jonathon, I will remind you how cruel you were to me.

THE ADVENTURE

Three days a week Mom spends at a program run by the Peel Region Alzheimer's Society,

where she does exercises, crafts, games, and they even provide meals!

The other days, it's just me and her.

And I try to keep things fun.

I'll either act out a few Shakespeare monologues,

or play her YouTube videos of Winnipeg Jets highlights,.

But she loves when I play harmonica!

Especially Stan Rogers

Check it...

(Plays Northwest Passage)

Mom has been my only harmonica audience member ever

No offence.

When I play this (Old Susanna)

She dances away, and laughs

And this one, from A Christmas Carol (Barbara Allen)

Makes her nostalgic, reflective, and a little bit sad.

I try to make our daily trip to Starbucks a bit of an adventure,

and there's this patch of grass where we can cut through.

I mean, OK, sure, it might be “safer” to take the sidewalk and wait for the lights,

Like a “pedestrian,” But what fun is that?

I want Mom to have exciting experiences.

Not in the, “let's go skydiving” sense, Could you imagine?

No, something well contained, that could present itself as, well, benign danger.

You, know, to keep life exciting!

So here we are, cutting through the patch of grass – the shortcut to Starbucks,

and it's riddled with pine cones,

And we are carefully avoiding each one like we're in some sort of minefield,

like co-conspirators on a dangerous mission

Jon: Mom watch out for that one!

Mom: Oh! Dear me!

Jon: Oh! There's another!

Mom: My goodness, we're...we're...!

Jon: trapped, we're trapped, Mom!

Mom: Yes, trapped.

Jon: Those damn pine cones.

(SFX – Traffic Sounds)

Once we get to Hurontario Street the next step is to, well, jaywalk across 6 lanes of traffic to get to the Starbucks.

Now I know it sounds like I'm throwing my 78 year old mother into traffic.

and, well, yeah, I'm throwing my 78 year old mother into traffic.

But it's a red light!

And Mom loves it!

We're hopping here and there as Mom holds on to my arm,

Moving as fast as we can, like... human Frogger.

Once we make it through the 6 lanes, Mom is laughing and very much relieved,

and we have earned our Coffee and Toffee nut cookie

We sit down at the Starbucks

And she is looking at me,

Sometimes, I have to navigate whether she is having a moment of non-clarity.

And I know that, when she does, it's good that I'm there beside her.

Jon: Are you OK Mom? That was fun, running across the street like that,

Mom: (looking reflective) Sometimes...sometimes, I wonder if I've gone past...what I can do.”

THE CRUNCH TIME

It's around dinner time, December, and well, I've become quite the cook during these days.

Like some sort of bachelor-induced Martha Stewart.

I've really stepped up to the cooking plate, I gotta say.

Lot's of soups, built from scratch, fresh vegetables, and even chicken!

Though this one day I get lazy and swap out my homemade soup recipe with Campbell's Cream of Mushroom and sure enough...

Mom: you're a really good cook.

Jon: Mom, it's Campbell's!

But I've settled in quite nicely,

it's been a few months now and Mom and I have our routine, and I'm prepared to stay for as long as it takes for her to get accepted to a care facility.

Trish has had her challenges navigating long term care homes,

and sends me links to certain places, but while one has “shared accommodation” another is out in friggen Markham,

and the most modest ones are still over $2000 a month.

Not only that, we all have to be prepared and ready to go,

and the morbid reality is that as soon as one poor soul passes,

24 hours later another will take their place, like some sort of grim conveyor belt.

But by some macabre luck-not-luck, Mom's episode going missing has vaulted her near the top of the wait list, but it's still been over a month since that happened, so it look like I'm here for the long haul.

Mom's behaviour over the past week has been...interesting.

I'll go in to her room say goodnight and she will think that it's morning, and that she should get up for the day.

Or I'll wake up in the middle of the night to find her standing in the living room

in the complete darkness, day clothes on, just standing there.

Her words now escape her more and more, and our conversations of late will end with my prompts.

But I'm happy to be here,

In fact, it's an honour,

and as much as it was a challenge at first, navigating blister packs full of pills and cooking chicken, I've become pretty good at this.

So, ya, we're sitting in the living room, and Mom's in her favourite red chair,

eating Campbell's mushroom soup passed off as my own.

Mom: And...my sister...and I...we'd have to be ready to...it was a huge wooden dining room table...and we'd hear the wizzzzzz of the bombs...

Jon: The V2 rockets

Mom: Yes

Jon: And you'd have to duck under the table.

Mom: Yes. We were by the sea. Our house...called Wavecrest. There were no numbers back then. And the beach by our house had nothing but barbed-wire, strewn all over it...because the Germans...

(SFX – Text Message)

(Reading) “Mom's been accepted into a care facility, we have 24 hours, Can you call me ASAP?”

It's time.

Never have I ever experienced a new chapter being ushered into ones life as fast as those 24 hours.

Not only do we have to move out of Mom's well-lived apartment,

but we have to completely downsize in order to fit her favourite belongings into a room in a long-term care facility.

And with all the ruckus with grabbing Mom's essential belongings for her new home,

It never really dawned on me that Trish and I would have to meticulously go through all of Mom's things...and decide.

So we make 4 piles;

The recycling pile, the keep in storage pile, the go-to-the-care-home pile, and the donation pile.

Oh, and the “we'll keep for ourselves” pile.

So I guess 5 piles.

Either way, we have a mountain of stuff to get through.

And with each knick-knack, or clothing item, or kitchen utensil

We decide it's fate,

While a flood of memories return with each one.

I never knew how hard this would be.

This fridge magnet I barely noticed for 8 years, suddenly holds a story.

And I replay each old memory in my mind,

while I go through everything,

There's this green salad bowl, that I swear Mom has had for 30 years.

And it's too old to keep.

And we can't give it away.

But I'm instantly taken back to our infamous food fight,

and this green, shitty salad bowl that played a starring role.

(looks at salad bowl, sense of joy, tosses it into recycling)