Table 144

I hate my mother. It has taken me relatively little therapy to be able to say so, because I hate her with the pure vengeance befitting a 15-year-old. Always have. Just never outgrew it, I guess. Occasionally, it flares up.

I wish we were estranged, but she continues to haunt me.

Not from the grave: from Scottsdale, Arizona.

She's currently holding many of our possessions hostage since the move because a 2-3 bedroom (1600 square feet!) Penske truck does NOT hold a 700 square feet apartment's worth of furniture. Much was left behind in haste as we piled the car high and drove like maniacs. Well, I did...Mel and the baby flew out of there days before.

Once every 3 months, she priority mails (hurry! hurry!) a box of things we've never seen before in our lives.

So I called a few weeks ago to ask if we needed to buy new Christmas ornaments and stockings. No, no, she assured me, she was waiting until after her Thanksgiving trip to go through everything, so considerate was she being (yeah, right). With me on the phone, she promised, she could figure out what to send.

Mel and I both had an essential list, to be shipped at her leisure (after all, we've known this was coming since August):

1. Menorah for Hanukkah, starting this week
2. Stockings with sentimental value
3. Tree ornaments

Basically we said that we didn't want anything that we could get at Walgreens, just the irreplaceables.

Arrived today in the mail: 2 boxes, one priority shipped for $11, about the size of a shoebox. She had to WASH the stockings, she crooned, since they'd been stored in the shed.

We're terrible people. How dare we store them there.

So the squeaky clean box comes today, white with mold and festooned with 10 stockings that AREN'T OURS, but do in fact seem freshly laundered.

One peach Faded Glory Walmart brand sunhat. Never seen it before in my life.

My Urban Outfitters army bag from college

Two tree toppers

A box of bulbs. Never seen em before, but one bulb has what appears to be cat shit dripping down the side of it

4 red and green tealights ("Hey! I bought those at Target one year!" says Mel with a dawning look of recognition)

Three crushed Christmas crackers (the English pull n' pop type)

A box of ornaments of her choosing, including all the ones with pieces missing, or that were crushed, or dirty, or purchased at Grey Drug (Cunninghams?) when Carter was president.

A plastic bear ornament that says "Melanie" in gold letters. "Is this MINE?" Mel asks. "I've never seen it before in my life."

Three Florida themes sun catchers. No idea.

"Just pretend we lost it in a fire," Mel says to me. "We knew we weren't getting anything we wanted going into this.