FRESH YARN presents: Oh Mother, Where Art Thou? ... by Michelle Boyaner

FRESH YARN presents:

Oh Mother, Where Art Thou?
By Michelle Boyaner

"…And in her eyes you see nothing, no sign of love behind the tears cried for no one,
a love that should have lasted years." -The Beatles

I wonder if I'd have the nerve to play the Rickie Lee Jones version of that song at my mother's funeral? Problem is, she's not dead yet. Not even sick. Well, not physically anyway. She's one diagnosis short of a long-term stay in a big white building up on a hill somewhere, wearing a backwards jacket, surrounded by finger-paints. But it's not gonna happen. We'd never let her get sent away. That would be too tit-for-tat. So, she's chatty, self-centered and has a styrofoam cooler filled with frozen peas where her heart should be. So? She's still my mother.

Looking back, I probably should have killed her when I had the chance. When I was a fetus. As a fetus I had all kinds of access (a backstage pass, if you will) to various vital organs and major arteries I just can't get to now. Hindsight is 20/20, but in the 40 years since that missed opportunity, she has given this all-grown-up fetus many reasons to kick herself for blowing that chance. If I had, however, killed her when I was a fetus, I would undoubtedly have been acquitted, as a jury of my peers, 12 fetuses and two alternate fetuses, would have been very sympathetic. Additionally so if my court-appointed public defender had been allowed to introduce "future behavior by the mother" into evidence.

But I didn't commit that crime, and I was never arrested. And that is just one more thing that sets my mother and me apart, because on January 2, 2005, my mother Elaine, a 67-year-old grandmother of 11, was arrested, booked, frisked, orange jump-suited and transported on a giant black and white bus with bars on the windows, along with hookers and drug dealers (who I'm sure are lovely people and just misunderstood) to the County Jail. She was locked up and locked down. She was body cavity searched. (I know, it burns the eyes just to think about it.) Her belongings were held in a large plastic bag. She stopped being Elaine, and started being Inmate # 2392794.

If Lifetime Television for Women were going to launch a new network, say Later-in-Her Lifetime Television for Older, Self-Centered Women, I could produce and direct a new reality series for them, based on my mother's current life called, Somebody's Crazy Grandma. The pilot episode would cover her recent run-in with the law.

My first job would be casting. Think Elizabeth Taylor WITHOUT the glamour, money, famous friends, little dog, fabulous wardrobe, or white diamonds. Wait, that doesn't make sense. That's like saying, "I'll have the Cobb Salad, but WITHOUT the chicken, bacon, tomatoes, blue cheese or avocado." My mother is a bowl of Iceberg lettuce to Elizabeth Taylor's Cobb Salad. I don't know why I started with Elizabeth Taylor in the first place. Wishful thinking, I suppose.

So, Later-in-Her Lifetime Television for Older, Self-Centered Women would probably end up casting an unknown to star in Somebody's Crazy Grandma. Fine. I 'd be happy with an unknown. It's just important that she be believable as someone who would have, when she was much younger, given birth to seven children, divorced her husband when she was 43 and then one day, packed all her children's belongings into trash bags (Glad bags, I think. Oh, the irony!), and left the bags, along with the children, in the driveway of her ex-husband's new home. With the motor still running on her Datsun B-210 she would have waved goodbye and headed off into the sunset, to the promised land of Provo, Utah, where, as a newly-converted Mormon, the good life awaited her.

As director of this pilot episode of groundbreaking reality television, I'd place cameras everywhere. Several in the two-bedroom apartment she shares with her loveable, yet troubled, somewhat-bedridden middle daughter and four beautiful, young grandchildren. We're not really sure who is living with whom, as they've been in this co-dependant set up for so long, and moved so many times, nobody can really remember how it all began. Such details wouldn't matter to the audience as they would be preoccupied, oddly intrigued and more than slightly disturbed by the constant shrieking of Grandmother's voice.

Continuing, I'd show the loveable, yet troubled, middle daughter fast asleep due to her having consumed an unintentional overdose of a popular prescription pain reliever and becoming, thereby, unable to deal with her four beautiful young children and the flu from which they are all suffering.

The 67-year-old grandmother of 11 would then pile her four beautiful young grandchildren into the van for a quick trip to the local drugstore.

I would have another camera pick her up as she enters the parking lot of the Sav-On drugstore where she clumsily pulls into the handicapped spot, grazing the pole. I'd then cut to one of many cameras inside the store where we would observe her entering and stopping at the magazine rack to find out what's happening with Brad & Jen. Then on to the cosmetics aisle where she pauses to look at a newly arrived shipment of Cover Girl lipsticks, and finally at the pharmacy counter where she rambles on for several minutes to the friendly pharmacist who is familiar with her and nods and acts as if he's listening, trying to cut her off so he can advise her to buy Pedialite for her four sick grandchildren.

I'd then have a guy on a steady cam follow her to the cash register and we'd listen as she tells the cashier all about how her daughter is very ill and she takes care of her grandchildren and that her finances are in tragic disarray and that she might have to soon claim bankruptcy, and let's cross our fingers that this credit card works -- or wait, maybe this one, all the while basking in the cashier's freakish attention, like a streaker at a European soccer match.

Intermittently I'd cut back to the van to show the children, ages five through eight, sitting in their seats, still belted in, talking about Hillary Duff or Lindsay Lohan, then nodding off, coughing and occasionally wiping their runny noses on their sleeves.

I'd now transition to an exterior camera and show the 67-year-old grandmother of 11 entering the van, the kids clamoring in dehydrated excitement, her shrieking at them to sit down. We'd watch the van pull out of the spot, narrowly missing a Toyota Prius whizzing by behind her, and we'd show what looks to be a bystander dialing the police to report what she believes to be a reckless driver in a van with four children inside.

Because this is reality television, a Police Cruiser would just happen to be nearby and would observe the driver of the van barely avoiding a collision with a shopping cart, then a bright yellow concrete pole. The police would pull the 67-year-old Grandmother of 11 over before she exits the parking lot.

After speaking to her and experiencing her indiscernible chatter firsthand, the officer would conclude that this driver is intoxicated and the four children in the car are in danger. She wouldn't be intoxicated, though. She would be this 67-year-old Grandmother of 11 in her normal state. Wacky, with a backwards W.

Meanwhile, a female officer in a second squad car would gather the four beautiful fever-filled snifflers from the back of the van and take them back home to their mother, who by this time would have woken and fixed herself a grilled cheese sandwich and begun to wonder where everyone had gone.

At this point in the pilot episode, I'd have to recuse myself from my role as director because I'd just witnessed my mother being arrested for misdemeanor DUI and felony child endangerment. In addition to it being an obvious conflict of interest, I'd be much too self-conscious to be included in this exploitation and could not allow the cameras to show the audience the years of anger and pain peeking out from behind my eyes. Remember, it's only funny if you're showing the crazy, shrieking grandmother in the van.

Perhaps I seem harsh. Pardon me; I've been backsliding ever since my therapist died. Shame really, all that work and now the resurfacing of all this anger. Maybe this could be the basis for another reality show, the continuation of the story. It would be called Forgiveness.

This time the cameras would be on me. First, they would show me swallowing the giant lump in my throat labeled "anger." Next, I'd pick up a phone and begin inquiring about my mother's whereabouts, gathering information and making plans for her $100,000 bail, and phoning lawyer-friends, explaining how ridiculous this is, and telling them she's 67 years old and a Grandmother of 11 for God's sake who as an avowed Mormon has never had a drink in her life, is in a jail cell and she must be so scared sitting there and even SHE doesn't deserve this, and Oh my God I can't believe she's in jail and I'd stay up all night and finally get her released and eventually get the charges dropped and all along the way I'd find myself crying and wiping away the tears being shed for a woman, my mother, who did the best she could.

Because the bottom line about that rambling, crazy, selfish 67-year-old grandmother of 11, is that when she was arrested and wrongly accused of Misdemeanor DUI and felony child endangerment, she was in fact at the store buying Pedialite for her four, sick-with-the-flu, beautiful young grandchildren, once again doing the best she could.

Yeah, I think I'd call that show Forgiveness. I hope it makes it on the air.