I really didn't need this

When I rode the bus home tonight I thought that the worse thing I had to deal with right now was the fact that our supplier had out-of-stocked us on rolled oats two orders in a row. (This may not sound like a crisis to you, but when you run a natural foods bakery it is. Trust me.) On the bright side my general manager had approved my proposal for increasing the Bakery's labor hours (Thanksgiving, you know) and I had some nice tilapia fillets to experiment with for dinner.

When I got home my answering machine was flashing so I hit play, expecting to get someone trying to sell me satelite tv or some political ads. The first message was from a friend of mine who has become good friends with my mom in recent years. She was calling to let me know that the furnace in my mom's house had gone out and that Mom was going to be staying with her that night. The second was from my mom, asking me to call her. There's too much of my life backstory for me to explain why these calls gave me immediate feelings of doom, but they did and I don't think I was wholly irrational on this.

I immediatly called the friend and got a busy signal. Hung up, waited 30 seconds, hit redial. Busy signal. Hung up and redialed carefully in case I had misdialled the first time. Busy signal. Gave up calling her for the moment and called my dad. Dad was home. Yes, he knew about the furnace. Yes, he had made arrangements to have the furnaced fixed but it was going to take a few days so Mom would have to find someplace to stay during that time.

Feeling a little better after talking to Dad I called the friend again. This time I got through and we had a conversation that made me feel worse again. Mom had called her up around noon semi-hysterical about her furnace. Neither of us could figure out what she was so upset about. It's not even that cold out yet--I haven't even turned my heat on--so even if she had no friends to stay with it wasn't like she was in danger. And if she wanted to have hysterics with someone, why not call me up? She has my work number and she's called me before.

I finished my conversation with friend, called up my mom and had a conversation that worried me even more because all my mom wanted to tell me was that she would be staying at friend's for a few days and she didn't want me to be worried if I called the house and didn't get an answer. She didn't volunteer any information about when the furnace had gone out or why she hadn't called me before or anything. Looking back on this it occurs to me that I should have asked, but in my family no one tells anyone about anything and 40 years of habit are hard to break.

After I got off the phone I cooked myself dinner. I didn't feel especially hungry at that point but it's a shame to waste good fish and I knew I needed to eat anyway. I no longer felt like experimenting so I just rubbed in some garum masala, coated it in flour and fried it. It wasn't fabulous (needed lemon juice, but I didn't care enough to get up and get some) but it was good enough I had seconds. Afterwards I felt a little better. Then I typed up all this and felt, not better, but calmer. I will, I think, be able to get some L5R work done before I finally go to bed.

But still I'm worried. I'm worried that there will be some unexpected problem in the basement that will delay putting the furnace in. I worry about the expenses this is creating for my dad. I worry about Mom overstaying her welcome. I worry about her inexplicable reaction to the furnace failure.

But most of all, I think, I worry about the fact that women grow up to be their mothers.