I have mentioned before that my mama keeps a beautiful home. In fact, her idea of heaven on earth would be to have four or five days of blissful alone time so that she could dust every single picture frame, clean vast expanses of baseboards and wash each window with her homemade glass-cleaning solution (wiping only with newspaper, girls. only with newspaper. paper towels leave pesky streaks). And then, for kicks, she would launder all her table linens, hang them up to dry, and press them to perfection with a red-hot Oreck iron.

You see, housekeeping, for Mama, isn’t so much a chore as a calling, and she does it better than anyone else I know. 

If there’s any crack at all in my mama’s firm housekeeping foundation, it’s that she favors form over function. It’s not a big deal, really – it’s simply a result of her desire for everything to look pretty. She doesn’t like unsightly objects to disturb her decorative flow, and that is why she once placed a large hall tree in front of the air conditioner thermostat in my childhood home.

Now granted, the hall tree looked lovely, but there was absolutely no way to make a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom without slamming a substantial portion of my thigh against it. Once I limped back to my bedroom and gingerly crawled into bed, however, at least I could sleep with the assurance that Mama’s aesthetic sensibilities were preserved by keeping that unsightly thermostat out of sight. And besides, that deep purple thigh-welt was bound to fade with time. 

When Mama and Daddy moved to another house about a year and a half ago, my sister and I made it our mission to give Mama more function, even if that meant sacrificing a bit of her beloved decorative form. I spent several weeks in my hometown before the big move, cleaning out closets, setting up for the mother of all garage sales, and trying to help Mama sort through over forty years of accumulated stuff.

“At the new house,” I would say, “you can streamline.”

“At the new house,” I would say, “you can focus more on function.”

But Mama just doesn’t have it in her. She would cover up the pipes on the back of a commode if Daddy would let her. Seriously. She’d go pick out some floral fabric, consult with a seamstress, and then pay somebody to make pipe cozies. She absolutely would.

And trying to convince her that it’s perfectly fine for a thermostat to be visible is like trying to teach a cat to bark. It goes against the natural order of the universe. 

At least now, in the new house, the massive book cabinet that’s covering the thermostat is out of the line of traffic. You don’t have to worry about taking out a chunk of your shin while trying to walk around it, but you do have to find a flashlight and then shine it behind the bookcase in order to read the thermostat settings. This process drives Daddy to complete distraction but leaves Mama sighing with contentment, as does the sage green velour throw that’s artfully draped across an inoperable wall heater in their den. 

This past weekend D. was helping me make up the bed at Mama and Daddy’s house, something he hasn’t done very often because the intricacy of Mama’s bed-making system can be a little intimidating. All things considered, he was doing pretty well; after almost ten years of marriage to me, he understands that the process is far more elaborate than pulling a bedspread over some pillows. He realizes that on my mama’s side of the family, making up the bed means that it’s time to put on your protective goggles and get ready to do some hard labor. It’s not for the faint of heart.

As we were working on pulling up layer-o-cover #4, Mama swooped into the room and picked up the pillows we’d slept on the night before. I didn’t think a thing of it because I know the routine, but D. paused for just a second and said, “Hey. Your mama just took all the pillows. What’s she doing with them?” 

“Putting them in the closet,” I said. 

“Putting them in the closet? Why?” he asked. 

“Because she doesn’t think they’re pretty enough to be on the bed.” 

D. could not quit laughing. Even when he was getting into the shower several minutes later, I could hear him chuckling across the hall. 

Several years ago my friend Daphne’s husband coined the phrase Stunt Pillows^TM to refer to the purely decorative pillows, the ones that are often the very essence of form over function. They look great, for sure – but don’t you even think about using them for something as mundane as sleeping. That would never, ever do. 

With that in mind, please examine the following three pictures:

Based on the photographic evidence, I feel it is appropriate – and dare I say, necessary – to christen my mama’s house as The Stunt Pillow Palace^TM of America. 

If you’d like to take a tour, I can probably arrange it. I know she’d be delighted to show you how she concealed an unused electrical outlet in her kitchen by hanging a picture in front of it.

But don’t you even think about stretching out on one of her beds.

Not unless you make a trip to the Functional Pillow Closet first.

When D’s mother Martha was in college, some of her sorority sisters gave her the nickname “Martie.” They’ve continued to call her “Martie” over the years, and the reason why I keep putting the word “Martie” in quotation marks is because that’s exactly how Martha writes it. Every card, every letter, every note that we get from her is signed like this:

Love,
Mother
“Martie”

Personally, I like to think of “Martie” as Martha’s rap alter-ego, someone who would be featured on a hot new single called “Mother’s Got A Bell (A Ring-A-Ding Bell)” by Jay Z. featuring “Martie,” Ludacris and Justin Timberlake. As far as I know neither Martha nor “Martie” has any plans to enter the hip-hop scene, but I’ll be sure to let you know if that changes.

Anyway, Martha is as proud of her nickname as she can be; I think it makes her feel all young and fun and devil-may-care-ish. Many times when we have been out shopping I have overheard her talking to complete strangers about the texture of a bath towel or the cut of a jacket or the length of a strap on a purse, and inevitably, after she mentions that her son and daughter-in-law just love this town, just love it!, and then gives them a brief overview of our college days, early married years, and our current obligations and responsibilities with work and parenthood and whatnot, she’ll mention that her grandchildren call her “Martie” because that was her nickname in college and she always knew that she wanted her grandchildren to call her “Martie” because she was afraid if she didn’t ask to be called “Martie” they would end up calling her something like “Big Maw” or “Mar Mar.”

So after we wrapped up the festivities at Martha’s house on Wednesday night, after Martha apologized for the amount of food on her dinner plate because all she’d had to eat that day was a piece of caramel cake and certainly those four tablespoons of squash, two tablespoons of turkey and the half a roll were Terribly Excessive, we knew we had another big day-o-fun in store because D’s best friend, Todd – who also happens to be Alex’s godfather – was coming to town on Thursday so that we could meet his girlfriend, whose name just happens to be – can you guess it? – Marti.

!!!

Now see! Isn’t that more fun! We were going to have “Martie” and Marti! In the same place! Can you even imagine?!

Todd works in Los Angeles as a sound editor, and because of that we don’t get to see him nearly enough – what with the thousands of miles in between us and all. But he and D have talked almost every single day for the last fifteen years, so we don’t notice the distance as much as other people might. By the way, Martha always tells people that Todd “does the sound on the movies,” and it never fails to make me laugh because it implies that he is singlehandedly responsible for the fact that the world’s moviegoers can hear anything at all when we sit down to watch a show at the local cineplex or enjoy a DVD in the comfort of our homes. So thank you, Todd, for taking care of that for us. It must be a whale of a job.

So by the time Todd and Marti got to town, Alex was thoroughly confused about who was going to be with Todd. D and I tried to explain that Marti is a different person than the grandmother he knows as “Martie.” And when he finally met Todd’s Marti, Alex rectified the problem in a way that only a three year old could: he immediately called Todd’s girlfriend “New Marti.” And he called his grandmother, at least for the purposes of clarity, “Old ‘Martie.'”

At which point Martha no doubt wished that she’d just gone with “Big Maw” or “Mar Mar” when it came to her mamaw moniker.

From here on out I’m going to mostly let the pictures do the talking, but I have to say that Todd’s Marti, aka “New Marti,” is a total doll. She had been at Martha and Sissie’s house all of eight minutes when we started taking pictures, and I’m here to tell you that she just jumped right in and loved on them like she’d known them all of her life. D and I both hope that Thursday was just the beginning of many, many afternoons with New Marti. She’s warm, genuine, and real – LOVE HER.

Now around the sixth time that “Martie” said, “Oh, this is just more fun! I’m not used to having another person named Marti around! It’s so much fun! Isn’t this more fun?,” Todd got a little tickled, and it snowballed into one of those wheezing laughs that results in tears. And the more Todd laughed, the more Martha grinned and giggled.

Todd absolutely adores Martha and Sissie, as evidenced by the fact that he wanted his girlfriend to meet them. And with everything they’ve been through lately – Sissie’s broken hip, extended hospital stay, doctor’s visits, ongoing therapy, etc. – I think Todd and New Marti’s visit meant more than Todd and New Marti will ever know. “Martie” and Sissie were tickled to death, no doubt about it.

Sissie even had her picture made with them in spite of the fact that she wasn’t wearing make-up, even though Martha asked her several times if she wanted “a little lipstick? Do you want just a touch of lipstick, Mother? Just a little bit? Before you get your picture made?”

I do hope all of you noticed that Sissie has her bathrobe cinched at the waist with a black belt, because really, even at 96, there’s just no excuse for wearing a shapeless garment, girls. And there are no words to articulate how much I love the fact that she didn’t have her make-up on yet, but BY JEHOSEPHAT SHE TOOK THE TIME TO PUT ON THAT BELT. Yes ma’am she did.

And finally. This next picture sums up why the visit would have been worth it even if we hadn’t enjoyed our time with New Marti and “Old ‘Martie'” and Sissie (not to mention the delicious lunch that my mama cooked):

The whole day just made me happy.

And I’m all done now.