On Mother’s Day, Husband and I met Son and Daughter at our favorite sushi restaurant. We all love sushi, which is a good thing where this particular holiday is concerned because Mother’s Day is the top dining out day of the year and every other restaurant worth eating at would be mobbed. Something about treating your Mom to a special feast on her special day doesn’t equate with raw fish for most people. But it does for me, so we never have to fight the crowds.
After we ate, we accompanied Son to his new house so he could give us a tour. I wrote about 25-year-old Son’s surprising real estate purchase in It’s All In The Details, and about the renovations he planned. Now that everything was done, he was ready to show us around the castle where he was now king.
It would be an understatement to say we were blown away. In the sunlit living room with the polished hardwood floor, sat a chocolate-colored leather sectional in front of a wall-mounted flat screen TV. The seating arrangement was offset by a tasteful area rug under the glass-topped coffee table.
SON: How great is this wall color? It’s called stone canyon. I thought it’d go with the brown sofa and the painter agreed. What do you think?
Husband, Daughter and I stood in a row like statues. I was trying to reconcile what I was seeing with the person who once lived in a room in our house. The person who considered decorating a poster of Tupac with his middle finger raised next to a varsity letter thumbtacked to the wall.
SON: And notice the bay window. That wasn’t there. I had that put in. I always liked the bay window in our house. It’s a nice touch.
Daughter and I looked at each other. I whispered to her that I never knew he liked the bay window. Daughter whispered back that she never knew he was even aware we had a bay window.
SON: Follow me upstairs.
We filed up polished wood steps and stopped at the doorway to Son’s bedroom. He turned to us and said it was okay if we wanted to take our shoes off so we could feel how truly plush the carpeting inside was. It occurred to me then that if Son were gay I wouldn’t be caught so off guard by all of this. But he isn’t so I was.
SON: I blew it with the sheets. I spent a bundle on this bedding at Bed, Bath and Beyond, and then washed the sheets with the pillow shams.
He pulled the burgundy comforter back to reveal mauve colored sheets. We told him they matched very nicely. He said they were originally white. Bright white.
SON: I always used to wonder what the reason was behind that sorting the laundry thing.
OSV: It’s a well-guarded secret. Like the one about using cold water for colors.
SON: (nodding) Those are the last sheets to trick me. Let’s go down to the kitchen. The tile guy was here this morning and finished the backsplash.
Husband turned to me and mouthed “Backsplash?” as we descended the stairs, and it was all making me dizzy. Hearing the son who used to forget to scrape the goose shit off his soccer cleats say the word backsplash was almost too much.
We leaned on the granite topped work island in the middle of Son’s new kitchen as he described the appliances. I don’t even have a work island. A metal sculpture hanging on the wall above it caught my eye.
OSV: That’s an interesting piece of art.
SON: It isn’t exactly art. It’s a wine rack.
OSV: Are you a wine drinker?
SON: I will be.
Daughter walked across the diagonally set ceramic tile floor and looked directly into Son’s face.
DTR: Who are you and what have you done with my brother?
To complement Son’s impeccable taste, here are Cousin’s brilliant photos from his recent trip to Copenhagen and Oslo
Nyhavn Harbor
Copenhagen Lifeboat
Angry Boy, Vigeland Sculpture Park
Vigeland Mother with Child