Shanghai Butterfly

We returned home for the holidays, and there's a whole novel in that somewhere, but one I'm not inspired to write.

Instead, here's a thing. My mother's driving scares me.

I don't mean she's reckless, or a speeder, or one of those strange beasts who seem to feel it necessary to tailgate you when you are one of only two cars on the street, the other being the one who is irrationally jammed up just behind you like he's harboring indecent thoughts about your trunk space, if you know what I'm getting at. I mean that she's scary, as in she's frightening. Last year, this was evidenced in a creative disdain for the minimum speed limit. Not the maximum, mind. The minimum. On a 60 MPH freeway, she would putter happily along at a comfortable 50.

This time, we discovered that she's added a new trick to her repertoire. She stops to read street signs.

No, I don't mean she reads the street signs. I mean she stops to read street signs.

You heard me.

Stops.

The car.

Mom doesn't read English very well. She reads it slowly. She feels it is irresponsible for her to read and drive at the same time. Other people would just not read the signs. She stops the car. This, for some reason, causes a little hysteria in her passengers.

I'm sorry. Did I remember to mention that she does this on the freeway, too?

"What are you doing? Oh my God. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

"Exit ... 6. What does that sign say? Sun-- sunset? Street."

"Mom, you can't stop. You're on the freeway. Mom, speed up. Oh my God. SPEED UP!"

"Yuuuuuhri. Do you want me to cause accident? I am reading."

Stops are also useful for deciding what to do next. For instance, deciding whether to park in this parking lot, or that parking lot. Half-in, half-out of the parking lot driveway, the entire back end of the van thrust cheekily out to block a major thoroughway, my mother pauses to decide whether she wants to pay $6 for parking.

"What to do. What to dooooo?"

"Mom?"

"Hm. We park here, maybe. Except it is raining."

"Uh, Mom. There are cars--"

"Do I have umbrella? Is there umbrella in the back?"

"--trying to get past, and you're--"

"Maybe there is other parking lot. It is raining."

"--blocking the ... oh my God, don't back up."

"What do we do? Hm."

Argument fails to make an impression. She is as teflon. By the end of the visit, we were numb. Stop on I-5? Sure, why not. Crane to look at a Christmas tree and veer ever-so-gently into the median? Whatever.

"Mom," I said gently during the car ride home from Sea-Tac. "Your driving is a little dangerous, isn't it?"

Her eyes grow round, dark, and shiny as marbles. "Me? I don't think so. I am the safest one. I have no accidents."

And then she slowed down to look at construction beside the I-5, while Barbara Bush zipped by us at a brisk 50 MPH.

***

"You know what your mom is?"

"What?"

"She's like that butterfly. You know, sometimes I'm driving to work and the traffic just stops dead, and a hundred yards later it just starts flowing again without any explanation. That's your mother, a thousand miles up in Seattle, flapping her wings."

"The Shanghai--"

"Yeah, the Shanghai Butterfly. That's your mom."