Snapshot

Throughout the Winter Games, I exchanged mails and pictures of my everyday Olympic endeavors with my dad who has a computer. My mother, on the other hand, decided on the day of her retirement that she would never, ever deal with a computer ever again. To this day, she has been true to her words and thus, isolating herself every day more from the rest of humanity. Nowadays, it is very hard to maintain close contact with someone living in a different time zone or lifestyle. Harder still when the motivation just really isn’t there. Calling her suggest impeding on hours of prime time, usually during weekends. This wouldn’t be so bad if the exchange would not systematically be pervaded with contempt. Before John, these phone calls would torment me for hours afterward. Now, not so much, I space them better, so she doesn’t really have a choice but to be on a better behavior, knowing that it may otherwise take months before she hears from me again.

Unfortunately for her, my mother is her own worst enemy, and always will be. There is really no point in punishing her for wrongdoings when she is so much better at it than I could ever be myself. She has been torturing herself every minutes of her miserable life. It’s quite sad, really.

Still, at some point, my mother clued into the fact that the Olympic Games were going on and asked if I could send her some pictures I took during that time. Well, I knew I would be exposing myself to utmost scrutiny so I chose carefully an array of subjects from crowds, landscapes to me and my friends, and picked only the best ones. Nothing good would come out of it, from either end, but I obliged. I had thirty or so printed and shipped to her.

It must have been last week when she left me a voice mail. She had received the pictures and wanted to discuss them. I figured since I would have to call on Easter, I might just as well wait and be ride of it all at once. I was prepared for the worst. I have long ceased to expect anything else.

She was thrilled, the pictures were beautiful, the landscapes marvelous, the crowds as impressive as on TV and as for me, my new hair cut made me look like a cancer patient in remission…

“Gee mom, no wonder you don’t have any friends if you talk to people like that”

“I never talk to people like that!”

“Humph…”