Interview with My Mother

During my retreat my writing coach had us do an exercise where we interviewed a character in our book.  I chose to interview my mother in my imagination and I certainly surprised myself with the imagined answers she gave me.  When I was finished I felt wonderful and thought to myself “now I need to do a real interview with Mor.”  So last night I made a call and to Mom’s happy surprise I told her she was being interviewed.  Just one question and she was off like a shot.

            So what did I ask her?  I asked her about our trip from Denmark to Canada.  I had heard some of the stories from my father but I don’t recall mother ever telling us her side of the story so it was incredibly interesting.  When I got home Sunday afternoon I had actually found the receipt for our ship tickets and I was able to confirm online when the ship docked at Pier 21.  But that is pretty dry stuff compared to my mother’s tale of life in Second Class. 

            Picture it.  The high seas of the Atlantic are tossing the ship about in a high storm, Mom is lying in the lower bunk bed with her 2 girls being violently ill while Dad is in the top bunk with a one year old boy.  Dad is responsible for The Boy which includes diaper duty.  There is no toilet in the cabin, they have to cross the hall to the publicly shared washroom.  Dad, boy scout that he was, used the porthole to dispose of the “disposable diapers” until the crew came and bolted up all the windows due to the violence of the storm.  Dad then had to dispose of the diapers some other way.  What to do?  Hmmm.  Apparently the only way he could think of was to flush the suckers down the toilet much to the dismay of the next visitors to the washroom.  They waded about in water up to their ankles and Dad quietly walked away with a slightly kiltered halo.  Naturally I had heard the story before but I had not heard my mother’s punch line.

            I asked her why he didn’t just throw them in a waste basket.  She replied calmly,

            “I never asked, it was his problem.”

            I don’t think I stopped laughing for 10 minutes.