My Mom has the strangest things happen to her. She lives in South Africa and I live in England. I phone every week to catch up with all the news and gossip. It is amazing that even when I call every second or third day she always has a story to tell.
My Mom is a great story-teller. Some of my fondest and earliest memories of childhood are about my Mom and stories. She loves books and reading and instilled the same love in my sister (Judith) and me. When we were younger and movies came on later on telly and they were age restricted she would always tell us the story-line of the good ones the next morning whilst driving us to school. It is amazing how she captured some of the nuances of the characters and atmosphere of those movies. They were often murder mysteries and I remembered her description of one so vividly that years later when I had forgotten the movie name and finally saw the film myself I was completely surprised to realise that I hadn’t seen the movie before even though it came with a sense of déjà vu! The movie was Gaslight. It is a powerful story of a young woman psychologically dominated by her husband. The story follows the wife who is alone in the house each evening, believing she's losing her mind: she can't explain the disappearance of familiar objects, the mysterious footsteps overhead or the ghostly flickering of living room gaslights.
The story for this week involves a monkey. My Mom lives at the beach and is currently in the process of selling her apartment. My Mom and sister share the apartment and they have decided mostly for health reasons to relocate closer to the rest of the family, which also happens to be a drier area and further away from the city and airports. As I said before my Mom is a “doer”. As soon as the decision was made she put the apartment on the market and contacted the estate agents to get the ball rolling the very next day. No time wasted. That was last week. Open house followed on Wednesday and now the estate agents have started bringing some prospective buyers around. In these challenging times my Mom realises that it may take a while to get her apartment sold, but she is doing all the things agents normally advise to help sell your home. Windows open so that there is a nice cool ocean breeze. No washing or laundry around (luckily she has a Laundromat facility in the apartment complex; otherwise she would never manage this one, her love of washing being previously noted!).
Yesterday a prospective buyer came to view the apartment and after viewing the apartment, my Mom took him downstairs to show him the garage and parking arrangements. Upon coming back upstairs she went into my sister’s bedroom and was confronted by a big grey monkey sitting in my sister’s window. She screamed in fight and tried to chase it from the room which scared the monkey too. The monkey leapt from the window onto my sister’s desk, knocked her papers and laptop flying. Then it jumped onto the TV and against the wall before heading out the front door. My Mom is not sure who was the most afraid her or the monkey. She did say that she was screaming! We did laugh when she was telling me, but she is very cross with the monkey and worried that children are feeding the monkeys which will encourage them to keep coming into homes. This is the second incident this week with cheeky monkeys coming into her apartment and it had never previously happened in the 8 years she has lived there.
Earlier this week she was shocked when her micro-chips (she only ever eats half of everything, Judith orders a plate of food and Mom eats half, actually probably a good way to diet!) left in the kitchen were stolen by a monkey and the empty box was left outside her front door. Evidence of the crime but no perpetrator in site that time.
My Mom is a great story-teller. Some of my fondest and earliest memories of childhood are about my Mom and stories. She loves books and reading and instilled the same love in my sister (Judith) and me. When we were younger and movies came on later on telly and they were age restricted she would always tell us the story-line of the good ones the next morning whilst driving us to school. It is amazing how she captured some of the nuances of the characters and atmosphere of those movies. They were often murder mysteries and I remembered her description of one so vividly that years later when I had forgotten the movie name and finally saw the film myself I was completely surprised to realise that I hadn’t seen the movie before even though it came with a sense of déjà vu! The movie was Gaslight. It is a powerful story of a young woman psychologically dominated by her husband. The story follows the wife who is alone in the house each evening, believing she's losing her mind: she can't explain the disappearance of familiar objects, the mysterious footsteps overhead or the ghostly flickering of living room gaslights.
The story for this week involves a monkey. My Mom lives at the beach and is currently in the process of selling her apartment. My Mom and sister share the apartment and they have decided mostly for health reasons to relocate closer to the rest of the family, which also happens to be a drier area and further away from the city and airports. As I said before my Mom is a “doer”. As soon as the decision was made she put the apartment on the market and contacted the estate agents to get the ball rolling the very next day. No time wasted. That was last week. Open house followed on Wednesday and now the estate agents have started bringing some prospective buyers around. In these challenging times my Mom realises that it may take a while to get her apartment sold, but she is doing all the things agents normally advise to help sell your home. Windows open so that there is a nice cool ocean breeze. No washing or laundry around (luckily she has a Laundromat facility in the apartment complex; otherwise she would never manage this one, her love of washing being previously noted!).
Yesterday a prospective buyer came to view the apartment and after viewing the apartment, my Mom took him downstairs to show him the garage and parking arrangements. Upon coming back upstairs she went into my sister’s bedroom and was confronted by a big grey monkey sitting in my sister’s window. She screamed in fight and tried to chase it from the room which scared the monkey too. The monkey leapt from the window onto my sister’s desk, knocked her papers and laptop flying. Then it jumped onto the TV and against the wall before heading out the front door. My Mom is not sure who was the most afraid her or the monkey. She did say that she was screaming! We did laugh when she was telling me, but she is very cross with the monkey and worried that children are feeding the monkeys which will encourage them to keep coming into homes. This is the second incident this week with cheeky monkeys coming into her apartment and it had never previously happened in the 8 years she has lived there.
Earlier this week she was shocked when her micro-chips (she only ever eats half of everything, Judith orders a plate of food and Mom eats half, actually probably a good way to diet!) left in the kitchen were stolen by a monkey and the empty box was left outside her front door. Evidence of the crime but no perpetrator in site that time.
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