One day I came home from a day of fishing, and I saw my mother had the plant pots out and a bag of soil and some flowers she bought at the store on the front porch. As I was looking over what she bought, she came out with cigarette in hand. We were talking over her plans when a car came down the street. It was Grandma’s infamous 1977 silver Impala… well, I paid no attention to the car coming, but I saw a look of horror on my mother’s face. You see, my mother had a rule that everyone needed to call first before coming over. Grandma normally didn’t break that rule. Today she did.

I looked at my mom and said, “What?” She stood there frozen and said (her exact words), “I’m busted! Busted! Mother fucker!” I turned around and saw the Impala pulling to the curb. My mother still stood there like a statue. Maybe she thought that if she was perfectly still that Grandma couldn’t see her. I said, “Gimme that!” and I grabbed her cigarette, and pushed it down into the dirt in one of the pots. “Don’t worry, you’re fine. Calm down.” Mom said, “Oh great… what the fuck is she doing here?!” I turned around and watched Grandma slowly (of course) climbing out of the car. Then I heard “BAM!” as mom ran inside and slammed the front door. You see, if Grandma found out that my mom was smoking, all hell would have broken loose.

I guess I was supposed to pretend that mom was gone and get rid of her? By the way, thanks mom for stonewalling me like that. Anyhow, I met grandma on the walk and told her that I just got home and the front door was locked. “Maybe she’s in the back yard,” and I led grandma around the side of the house. We got just inside the gate and there was more gardening stuff on the side of the house, “Oh,” says Grandma, “She must be home since all this stuff is laying out.” So then I thought I needed to initiate some small talk to buy time. Do you have ANY IDEA how hard it is to find something to say to the old Romanian lady when you’re 14 years old and barely speak the same language? I did my best, but it was so awkward. What made it worse is that I (we?) could hear my mother stomping around the house as she ran from room to room flinging windows open to air out the house. Hey mom… did you know that we can HEAR YOU when the windows are open? As each window would open, unladylike language would come gushing out into the universe. I remember that was the first time I ever heard my mom say, “Cock sucker!” from the upstairs window.

Grandma looked uneasy and didn’t know what to think. That’s when I started to hear the sound of Lysol being sprayed from the living room window right near our heads, thundering footsteps going up stairs, more bad language… and that’s when I started laughing. I wasn’t laughing horribly yet though. Grandma said, “Is something wrong?” I said, “No, mom’s just cleaning the house.” Then I heard, “Slam!” and then the whirring sound of a fan blowing outside from the upstairs window. Ok, now it was REALLY funny and I was laughing bad. Grandma turned around and walked towards her car. She said something to indicate that she had just stopped by as she was going back home from my aunt’s house in the next town over, she knew that it was a bad time, and that she was just going to go home. I walked her to her car and she took off, so I headed back for the house.

Mom came out and said, “Well? Where the fuck is she?!” I told my mom that she had left. I said, “Mom, you’re like 37 years old and a grown woman. If you want to smoke cigarettes in your own house then it’s your prerogative.” She said something like, “Oh that’s the last thing I need. If she knew I was smoking, she and my sister would never talk to me again.” I couldn’t help but think, “Um… problem solved!”