It's only a paper moon

My mother is forever trading money for magic beans. She is the white, female Cliff Huxtable. Did you ever see that episode of The Cosby Show where Cliff buys a juicer? The one where Rudy and that fat little dude from across the street end up cramming a bunch of grapes in it and breaking it and the fat kid runs out of the house covered in purple-stained clothes? My mother bought a juicer from one of those pre-Billy-Mays late-night TV shows that were really 30 minute commercials. Never used it once. To this day, it sits in her pantry, in mint condition, covered in dust.

Not long after that, she got on a real kick for that Dr. Bronner's 200 in 1 soap stuff... it was a face wash, a body wash, a shampoo, a toothpaste, a digestive aid, a hand soap, a dish soap, a mouthwash, a laundry detergent, a window cleaner, a carpet cleaner, a meat tenderizer, a laxative; it killed bugs, restored the finish on your car, cured insomnia, ordered take-out, performed abortions and was one of the first navigation systems. This little bottle of liquid was the I-phone of the 20th century; no matter what you needed, there was an app for that. Mom bought it by the case.

When it failed to perform most of its proclaimed available functions, the rest of the family refused to use it. We all had dirty hands, stained clothes, acne, bad breath, greasy hair and unsettled stomachs and we were constantly getting lost while driving. My mother, in an attempt to prove to us she had not been duped continued to use it for everything and told us it would “just take some getting used to.”

After several months of silent suffering, my mother conceded that perhaps it wasn’t quite all it was cracked up to be. That’s when she switched to whey. As in curds and whey. Yeah, my mom made her own milk. She ordered these packets of powder that you mixed with water and then poured into a special pitcher with a plunger in it and refrigerated. You had to pump the plunger and basically churn your own milk every time you wanted a glass.

The idea was that the fat – curds – would be separated out and the milk – whey – could be skimmed off the top and consumed. I don’t recall how or why this was supposed to be better for us than just buying skim milk at the store except maybe it wasn’t actually from a cow. It was space milk. Luckily this particular experiment didn’t last as long as the others. From day one, none of us would drink the stuff and every 5 days or so my mom was left to dispose of a lump of curds down the kitchen sink.

I can remember being 16, barely driving, sneaking out of the house and taking the car to the all-night grocery store to buy milk. Kids I went to high school with would be sitting in the parking lot drinking, smoking and listening to music. I walked right past them and went to the dairy section. I was jonesing for delicious, creamy, full-fat milk.

By the time I moved out, there were several other such instances including one summer when she kept an aloe plant on every available surface in the house just in case one of us happened to acquire a sunburn. I can't count the number of televangelists she sent money to for tapes or books or to feed hair-lipped children in Africa.

These days, her addictions are milder; her infatuations more short-lived. Currently, she buys only organic food and swallows a cocktail of vitamins and fish oils and charcoal every morning. She uses $200 eye cream, but nothing too terrible has come of that, yet. And I guess we are all partly to blame. None of us wants to be the one to tell her that she looks nothing like the lady on the bottle. My dad just says “you look great, honey,” and quietly hopes she will stick with this one for a while. Her next obsession could actually affect him and he figures he has paid his dues.
I doubt he has considered that with this recession my mom could likely end up on a street corner somewhere turning tricks for eye cream money...