Mom arrived here almost 2 weeks ago from Vancouver. Apart from coming for a long holiday, she's also here for a specific purpose—she's attending my niece's wedding. Yesterday was the akad nikah, and tomorrow evening will be the wedding reception. Mom has been keeping herself busy. I fancy that she's feeling very much alive because she's directly involved in organising all the errands in connection with the wedding. She enjoys that sort of thing, you see. She likes organising things; and she enjoys organising people too. Elsewhere in this blog, I have written about mom and her peculiarities.
Come to think of it, sometimes I find mom's habits very comical. She's one of those creatures who'd check the front door at least 10 times—to make sure that it's locked—before going to bed at night. She won't be happy if something is not done exactly right. If the sofa or the dining table is slightly out of alignment, those can be a torment to her, and I suspect she won't be able to sleep well at night.
When she's planning for something big such as Girlie's wedding, she'd plan for it like months ahead. That is quite normal, of course, when talking about arranging for who to invite, where to hold the party etc. But I'm talking about planning for what to wear and what colour to wear. That's how meticulous mom is with her plans. It must be some sort of paranoia, I don't know.
Anyway, for this particular trip, she had planned long ago what to wear for the wedding reception. She saw herself in a special dress and a pair of silver-coloured shoes. Come rain or shine, nothing will make her change her mind about what to wear at the wedding reception. That is quite understandable, considering that she planned for the outfit many months ago.
And so during her visit to Las Vegas some months ago, she found the perfect pair of silver-coloured shoes just for this occasion. She set her mind on those shoes—no other shoes will do. She bought those shoes and kept it safely for several months. When she came to KK last week, she made sure that she brought those shoes along. I have a shrewd suspicion that she must have checked at least 10 times that those shoes were indeed nicely packed in her luggage.
Upon arrival in KK, she spent the first few nights at my place. Among the first few things she did in her room was to take out those shoes and arrange them nicely near the door of her bedroom. I noticed those shoes and knew there was something very special about them. But I carefully refrained from asking her. Otherwise, it would probably have taken at least half an hour for her to tell the story about those shoes in full.
After a few days, it was time for her to move to Bridget's apartment. So she again performed her packing ritual. And yes, the checking and counter-checking to make sure all her stuff were in order, including those silver-coloured shoes. She put those shoes in a plactic bag. So all her stuff went into my truck and then I brought her to Bridget's apartment.
A few days later, I got a call from mom. There was a kind of panic in her voice—something in the order of the end of the world, if you know what I mean. Apparently, those precious silver-coloured shoes have gone missing! She said she probably left them in my house—that maybe she'd forgotten to bring them along. If it's other people, it would've been easier for me to believe that. But not when it comes to my mom!
Anyway, just to make her happy, I said I will check. And so I turned my whole house upside-down in search for those forsaken shoes, but they're nowhere to be found. I then made a call to mom to tell her the bad news. Still she wasn't satisfied. She told me to check again, and while I'm at it, I might as well check my truck too. Perhaps those shoes had miraculously ended up there. So another round of turning the whole house upside-down, plus checking the truck thoroughly. Zilch! Sorry, mom, you'll just have to go buy other silver-coloured shoes in town.
Two days later, I went running the 13km at the gym after work (it was raining, so I had no choice but to run indoor), so I arrived home a bit late. Mom took the opportunity to call Mia to ask her to conduct another round of thorough search for her shoes. When I arrived home, Mia was already waiting for me at the doorstep. She said that she's been searching for the shoes in the house, but couldn't find them. And she had only my truck left to complete her search. So I let her search my truck inside-out. Nothing!
Of course my spouse and I were not very thorough in our search, so mom thought. So she wanted to make another visit to our house to search for them herself. Unfortunately, she's having such a good time organising the wedding reception that it was difficult for her to find the time for the search.
This morning, I called mom up to ask how are things coming along. She gave me a brief (yes, amazingly, mom can be brief too, sometimes) account of yesterday's akad nikah (which I was unable to attend), and then kept me updated on the latest development on tomorrow's reception. It seems that everything is going on fine. Mom is having a ball keeping herself busy! But in the end, as I had expected, we arrived at the topic of her silver-coloured shoes. The bad news is that it is now confirmed that those shoes are really not in my house. The good news is that they have been in Bridget's apartment all this while. Voila!
Well, what's the real story with those shoes, you might ask?
When she was packing her stuff to move to Bridget's apartment, she put those shoes in a plactic bag, just as I had said earlier. Upon her arrival at Bridget's apartment, she was careful to single out those shoes from the rest of her stuff. She was worried that if someone else were allowed to handle those shoes, they might go missing in the end. So to be very sure, she put those shoes in her own bedroom. But after a while, she probably couldn't stand to see those shoes lying on the floor of the bedroom, even though they were in a plastic bag. So she decided to put them aside. But put them aside to where?
Now this is the killer part. Of all the places, she chose to tie the plastic bag to the window grille. That's not too offensive to her sensitive eyes, since the shoes are hidden behind the curtain. She was very pleased with herself for finding the best and secured place for those shoes. Only trouble was that after a few days, she forgot all about that hiding place! It's something akin to the squirrel hiding the nut it finds and then forgets all about the hiding place, you see.
So after I have turned my house upside-down and inside-out several times, Audrey finally drew the curtain in Bridget's room, and then—voila!—the forsaken silver-coloured shoes still intact in the plastic bag! Now mom is really happy. And Bridget and Audrey and the rest of them are really happy too. And I suppose I should be happy for all of them too. But it will probably take a few more days for my blood pressure to come down back to normal.
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