Invitation to a Grope

As if any visit to see my parents isn't colorful enough, today's visit included two of my sisters to draw even further outside the lines.

Mom had already asked me to come down today and do their taxes for them when I got a last minute email yesterday alerting me that two of the clan would be coming down for lunch, or, as she phrased it, "A veritable covey of daughters!"

In case you can't tell by that exclamatory sentence, she was thrilled at the prospect of having half her brood in house, while my main concern was who was making the trek so I could gird my loins depending on which two were involved.

Turns out it was going to be a favorite sister and a difficult sister, so I didn't reschedule and deny Mom her covey. Instead, I tried to arrive early enough to get taxes out of the way before the guests arrived. But life on the Northern Neck means the world's slowest wi-fi, so I was still at the computer when they sailed in bearing lunch.

One aspect new to the tax process this year was another layer of identification - driver's license ID number, expiration and issue dates - to thwart identity theft, so I called to Mom that I needed her driver's license as well as Dad's.

Now, you have to picture this: it's a gorgeous day on the river and my father is comfortably ensconced in his favorite chair on the screened porch, crossword puzzle in hand, engrossed in a conversation about sports (something about you don't get to make those kind of mistakes when you're being paid that much money) with Sister #5 when Mom goes out to retrieve his driver's license.

Mom: Karen needs your driver's license for the taxes.
Dad, sighing at the interruption: Okay, let me get my wallet.
Mom: Stay where you are. I'll get it for you. 
Dad, with a leer in his voice: Please do. It's in my shorts pocket. 

What, everyone's octogenarian parents don't make suggestive statements in front of their grown daughters?

Their taxes were filed and accepted by the IRS before we even sat down on the porch for a lunch that included chicken salad, a huge favorite of Mom's when it's made right, which prompted a story I'd heard but the sisters hadn't.

Back in the dark ages, Mom had taught us to make chicken salad using large irregular hunks of chicken meat, not diced or shredded, not minced or finely chopped chicken, but chunks. One day at a coffee shop in a nearby town, she ordered chicken salad, only to be served, according to her, texture-less chicken salad. Soupy and without so much as a hint of a hunk, my usually mild-mannered mother marched up to the manager and complained about the lack of discernible chicken.

My sisters were agog at the mental image of Mom trying to educate a stranger in a restaurant about the right way to make chicken salad. I visit her often enough to know that she abandoned mild manners shortly after passing the 3/4 of a century mark and not a moment too soon, if you ask me.

After eating, Mom had a project for us: dyeing Easter eggs for her bridge luncheon tomorrow at the Women's Club. I can't even recall the last time I dyed eggs, much less a dozen and a half of them, but here I was with my sisters filling mugs with vinegar and water to activate the coloring tablets.

I know, I know, it's morally wrong for a card-carrying heathen to be doing something even remotely connected to a crazy Christian holiday I have no use for, but Mom seemed to delight in doing something with us that dated back to childhood and, besides, she's still the boss of us.

Or, as we used to tell each other to signify importance when we were kids, "Mom said." Mom said we had to dye eggs today, so we dyed eggs.

Resurrections aside, we couldn't have asked for a more exquisite April day to be on the porch with a view of the Rappahannock's myriad shades of blue, feeling the soft, humid air around us and inhaling the perfume of the bouquet - tiny narcissus, tulips, pink lilacs, columbine, pussy willows, money plant - I'd plucked from the yard before starting taxes.

The three sisters drove the conversational bus with near constant laughter, with Mom and Dad adding context or claiming not to remember things that were etched in our minds decades ago.

"How come Karen got all the memory and the rest of us can't remember anything?" Sister #5 asked rhetorically. Why does the sun go on shining? How can women who've known each other for so long still have so much to talk about?

By the time I got home, it was with the certainty that I needed no further conversation, or at least only the incidental type (a fellow culture geek's opinions are always welcome), so I walked over to the Grace Street Theater for VCU Cinematheque's screening of "Russian Ark," memorable for the unexpected line, "Writers always have good hair."

Actually, what made the film notable was that all 96 minutes of metaphoric Russian history played out in the art and architectural magnificence of the Winter Palace of the Hermitage and were shot in one continuous take, one action or conversation immediately leading into the next one.

There it was: life had foreshadowed art, echoing my continuous take afternoon at the river, with a covey of sisters standing in for Russian royalty in period costumes.

Writers and good hair made appearances in both.