Yesterday was my mother's birthday. To celebrate, she spent the last weekend in vegas with her girlfriend. yes, you read that right, my mother is gay. She left my father after 25 years of marriage for a woman she knew back in highschool. Strange how these things happen. Anyway, it was her first trip to vegas, so last night when I made the compulsary phone call to wish her a happy birthday, I got to hear about how wonderful it was. I wasn't surprised by anything she said, as I've been there before, but I started thinking about how vegas is like being in an alternate reality...and frankly, that's probably exactly where my mother belongs. See, I've known for years that my mother is not right...she lives in this little bubble where she chooses her own reality...chooses what to believe and what not to. And for a person like her, vegas would be the perfect place to be. No where else in the world does the impossible happen so often as in vegas, and the same could be said for the space between my mother's ears. My mother has been known to, after the death of a close friend, say that she prefered to pretend that her friend was on an extended vacation. Denial anyone? My mother, even though she left my father for a woman, has been known to say "gee, I really don't know what went wrong in our marriage...I guess we just grew apart". My mother, after being basically dis-owned by my sister (long story, I'll save it for another post), and not having talked to her for 11 years, found out that my sister was in labor, called all the hospitals until she found her, and then showed up in her room, acting as though they had just been to lunch earlier that day. Do you know how weird it was for my sister to have this crazy woman drooling over her new baby and cooing "ohhh sweetie, grandma's here!", while having to introduce this wacko to her husband and her husband's family? My mother, who stood up in court and said to my father "you take him, I don't want the responsibility", refering to my brother (the only dependent child at the time of the divorce), only to say 5 years later "oh, I fought so hard to keep my baby, but that damn man just had a better lawyer". My mother, who after counseling a transvestite, told my father (they were still married) that she was considering living as a cross-dresser, so that she could better understand her clients. My mother who, after I yelled at her for smoking a cig in front of my son (no, I'm not a total prude, but he had a bronchial infection at the time and she promised me that she would smoke outside), looked me dead in the eye, with a smoke still in her hand, and said "I don't know what you're talking about...I haven't smoked all day". My mother, who once told me that she had an affair on my father when I was 8, and that he caught her in bed with her lover...fast forward to the year my husband has an affair and I ask my father "how did you ever get past the pain and the shame of it" and he has no idea what I'm talking about, because, in fact, my mother lied, and it never happend to him. I could go on and on and on, but frankly it makes me a little sick and a little sad, but suffice it to say, I think living in a world of complete imagination, where appearances, while deceiving, are everything, would suit her just fine. Move to Vegas, mom...I think you'll feel right at home.