Driving Miss Daisy

I was awake in the middle of the night worrying about my mother's hair. I'm serious. Her hair. Why?? Did I not just finish blogging yesterday about how my mother no longer had the power to twist me up like a pipe cleaner and I'm awake worrying about her hair?? Maybe I'm not quite as over my mom's "expectations" as I'd thought. Here's the problem in a nutshell: my mom wants to still go to the hairdresser about a block and a half from where she's moving, vs at The Plaza. Answer: Who cares? How she gets there is the problem. She wants to keep her current Hispanic housekeeper, Carmen, to drive her twice a week, a block and a half, to... the... hairdresser. OMG. This is what had me awake in the night, sweating. The Plaza has a driver that will take her anywhere, anytime she wants. Nope. Not good enough. She wants Carmen.

As my sister and I emailed back and forth yesterday, it was clear one of us was going to have to get parental on mom, and and it wasn't going to be my sister. Oh, noooooo. My stance is this: I'm going to set up regular appointments at the same time and day each week for mom, at both the hairdresser and with the Plaza driver guy. (Mom already has standing dates through May first--I'm just going to extend them on out--forever.) Then I'm going to give mom plenty of time to settle in to the Plaza routine and the driver. Further, I'm going to put all the damn appointments, myself, on all 50 of her calendars. Then we wait. If after several months, she just cannot adjust, we're gonna be doin' hair at the Plaza, with their lady, or at the Edgemere's salon.

What this is really all about is control. Mom knows she is losing it and is hanging on to the last bit of it by her well manicured acrylic nails. And it's also about mom's "hired friends"--the ones she's paid forever and is terrified of what might happen to them. As if they just won't be able to slog on without her. Not. They'll be fine.
The final straw last night was when my sister said mom also wanted to keep, Willie, our family's
yardman, for the last hundred years. Willie is the only yardman I know in HP who has a yardman. Juan Huerta mows and edges and blows the leaves at our soon to be sold former homestead. Willie? Well....he plants pansies, and polishes silver, diddles, and borrows money that he never pays back. He's almost as old as mom, and has already been hired by the buyers of mom's house to do what he's always done at our house--for them. My sister was amazingly clear that we weren't going to keep paying Willie. Well, duh. Carmen? I got Carmen duty. Anybody need a maid, that drives??