(Mom. Black Friday 2006; Clinton Crossing Outlet Mall, Clinton, Connecticut)
THIS YEAR marks the first year without my Mother - or, as she obliquely insisted I ought to refer to her, as if I should be saying it all the time as an honorific - “My Sainted Mother.” She passed away last year, on June 27, 2023, three years after being diagnosed with esophageal cancer. She did not want treatment: instead, as her cancer was already at Stage 3 when the tumors were discovered, she chose to spend her remaining days in the comfort of her home, watching every Victorian Murder Mystery and British Police Procedural available across every channel and media platform in the known universe. “Heaven,” she once remarked after ingesting whatever weapons-grade pain reliever and sedative she’d been prescribed, “would be a sumptuous and long, lingering dinner with Miss Marple, Inspector Morse, Father Brown, DCI Tom Barnaby, and Hercule Poirot.”
Ignoring the fact that these were fictional characters and not real people, I leaned in on it. “What? No Luther? No Columbo?” I asked.
“Ooh! Yes! Detective Chief Inspector John Luther! He would sit right next to me! And Columbo would be around, of course. But Luther…”
“Okay. Fine, Mah. We get it: you love Idris Elba.”
When she wasn’t reveling in the multifaceted history of the British Empire and extolling the virtues of the possibly unsound English preoccupation with tea, My Sainted Mother loved to shop and especially enjoyed the Fall/Winter Holiday Season.
Clinton Crossing Outlet Mall is one of those “Premium Outlets in an Outdoor Shopping Environment.” It is a sublime experience, depending on your temperament. Christmas music is piped in and plays from speakers from one end of the mall to the other, lest you forget why you’re visiting in the first place. The mall itself is about two football fields long (well, maybe one) and lined with the low-rent discount cousins of their glittering archetypes, appropriately adorned with colorful lights and various shiny decorations, ornaments, frills and all the holiday trimmings as Andy Williams filled the air, entreating children to “leave a peppermint stick for old Saint Nick hanging on the Christmas tree.”
Mom was a “Shop ‘til You Drop” figure of intense passion and commitment, but did not possess an iron constitution: she needed to take frequent breaks, (as depicted in the photograph above), recuperating after clumsily exiting the Calvin Klein store, burdened by shopping bags; and where she insisted with pale authority that she most definitely did not try to buy me a Christmas present or stocking stuffer.
“I wasn’t Christmas shopping for you! I was looking at ladies’ handbags! But I did see some nice men’s pants in there. You can’t wear jeans to everything!”
(Mom forever wanted me to cut my hair, go to law school and wear Nantucket Red pants with little blue Lobsters on them, you know, when hanging out at the New York Yacht Club with my cronies from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where we would nonchalantly discuss metal commodities futures and Caribbean Regatta season. Oy. That, it should go without saying, is not Me.)
It was coming up on 3 o’clock and the sky had a light purple cast to it. Daylight Savings had ended in October and the sun would be going down soon enough. It was already starting to fall near the tree line in the distance. We had been shopping for almost four hours.
Once Mom was sufficiently rested, we moseyed our way down to, I think it was Ruby Tuesday’s*. Some such chain or other that had a Salad Bar, which was an invention my Mother considered more important than the Moon Landing. Shopping with Mom during the Christmas season was always a gas because she simply had to visit every lavishly decorated store regardless of its relevance to our lives, like REI, Columbia or Patagonia. She was capriciously generous and altogether driven, in spite of my resistance: “Do you want Nikes? Maybe you need some new Nikes?” But the allure of a Salad Bar meant that any stops along the way would likely be brief. All except one.
Approaching the Williams-Sonoma outlet was especially dangerous, my own personal “Black Hawk Down.” Mom was triggered by kitchens and the myriad items which adorn them, or as I refer to them: things we don’t need. At the sight of the store - and the outdoor sign advertising “The Black Friday Holiday Savings Sale Event” along with cooking classes and free samples of stuffed mushrooms as prepared on the premises - Mom lit up and was suddenly reinvigorated with the galvanized focus of a meth addict Betty Crocker.
“I want to look at the Le Creuset. Also, you had mentioned that you wanted a garlic press,” she chirped as she hustled her way through the front doors. Inside, she handed off her shopping bags to me and transmogrified into a Prima Ballerina of the Kirov Ballet, in an ensemble by Talbots, fouetté-ing and pirouette-ing down the aisles like Natalia Makarova, defecting to the Northern Californian Cookware Mecca.
She could not be stopped. “You need new utensils, good ones that will last: spatulas, serving spoons. Maybe a whisk. And what about tongs? Who can live without tongs? Not you!” The frustrating aspect of my Mother’s rabid enthusiasm was slightly mitigated by the several other Mom-bots who ran amok like they were in a field of scarlet poppies. Suffice to say: Mom - who had diabetes; hypertension; moderate though still inoperable glaucoma; a pin in her left arm from a spill she took at our local Christmas Tree Shops; sleep apnea; nerve deafness; and who managed to survive nine car accidents, seven of which she was responsible for and one of which required the Jaws of Life to extricate her and my Grandmother - was not intimidated. Clearly she must have figured that if none of those things could take her down, Black Friday shopping alongside a bunch of entitled Connecticut retirees wearing Garnet Hill Garb for Grandmas wasn’t going to stop her either.
But protracted time in this pressure-cooker of outlet stores would only end in bloodshed and probably impair my Mother’s credit. I had to get us out of there. The only way I could maneuver us out was to suggest we regroup and plot a way forward over an Epicurean Communion at The Salad Bar at Ruby Tuesday’s. I managed to break us out with only minor injuries and limited fallout: Mom purchased some stainless steel kitchen utensils (“They’ll wash up like a dream!”) and a three-tiered wire hanging basket for fruits and vegetables. Oh, and the garlic press. (I still have all these items.) She talked incessantly to the dead-eyed cashier - understandably overwhelmed by this Demon of Domesticity - while feverishly pawing through her Vera Bradley Quilted Oversized Periwinkle Spring Tote ($138. in 2006) looking for her wallet. I stood quietly by, smirking and slightly tilting my head at the cashier as if to say, “Don’t worry: she does this. It’s almost over!”
We made it to Ruby Tuesday’s and once seated, I ferried the shopping bags (Saks Off Fifth; Ann Taylor Factory Store; Chico’s; Calvin Klein; Lindt Chocolate - for friends and neighbors - and obviously, Williams-Sonoma. Oddly, she bought nothing from the Le Creuset store) across the parking lot to the car while she wended her way to The Salad Bar.
The sun was down when I finally joined Mom at the table. She had seemingly hijacked The Salad Bar, explaining, “They had just finished restocking everything when we got here. I got all the best stuff, everything’s fresh! You should go get a salad!” I was pretty worn out after a full day of driving up from Newport and shopping. I got a salad, and as I recall, it was pretty sensational. Mom treated us to steaks, (this was before I stopped eating red meat), though neither of us could finish them (Doggie Bags!). She then insisted on dessert: two scoops of chocolate ice cream, with maybe two imperial pints of chocolate syrup over a double chocolate brownie with whipped cream and possibly other forms of chocolate which did nothing but promote diabetes, though it brought a smile to her face and was an excellent compliment to my coffee.
I miss those sensational Christmastime Shopping Sale Events. If only because it was such a thrill for Mom and she was always so happy. She would overdo it, overexerting herself so much that she mostly slept the entire ride home. Which was fine, as I would play reggae - she liked Bob Marley - and enjoy a leisurely drive back admiring the Christmas lights of the many hamlets and villages along the way.
In only a few weeks, it will be one year since my Mother passed. Rather than remain mired in grief, I am trying to move on by celebrating her life and the happiness she brought me, even when she drove me slightly nuts doing so. That’s what Mothers do, I guess (I saw that on Facebook).
In the meantime, for me it’s life one day at a time; and on this day, I choose to celebrate My Sainted Mother.
Happy Mother’s Day!
*I am not 100% certain it was Ruby Tuesday’s; but it was a national chain that featured a well-appointed salad bar.