The monkey made me do it

Glooooo-ria

One of my good friends is a 60-something year old tiny little Indian woman named Gloria. She's not related to me, we honestly have very little in common besides styles of humor, yet I look forward to seeing her as often as I can and visit with her and her mother Celia (who is 90-something and a firecracker) whenever I can.

Gloria is a hoot. The first day I met her, I had volunteered with a group to do some work on her house (paint the garage, clean/repair her back porch, mend part of her fence) since she is arthritic and not able to do lots of manual labor. She had cucumber sandwiches waiting for us in a fine china plate on the plastic table and chairs that graced her dilapidated porch, and made us tea and salads. We painted and chatted, and when she learned that I was in school and struggling for cash she decided to appoint me her personal interior designer and handywoman. I was glad to do it, and soon grew able to look past her pink and purple decorating scheme and somehow (I still don't know how) got on the good side of her tiny poodle, Doody. Yes, Doody.

Over the years I have painted her bedroom, her two bathrooms, her laundry room, mowed her lawn, repaired a couple end tables, cleaned her gutters and windows, and helped her decide the color scheme for all of the painting projects and helped pick out bathroom fixtures and linoleum for professional installers to deal with (thank God). She'd pay me a little, but I never asked her to and never told her anywhere close to what my labor was worth the few times she did ask.

I've also learned that Gloria used to be a professional opera singer in New York and was quite the girl-about-town. She has photos from those years and a portrait that was drawn of her (it's gorgeous). She unfortunately damaged her vocal chords while still fairly young and had to go into the family business as a hairdresser. Gloria trained for a couple of years in Paris before moving with her mother to New York and eventually somehow winding up in the tiny town of Seattle.

Celia (her mother) has a fascinating life story, and one that I have heard probably four or five times now (it never gets old). She grew up in a Christian household in a Hindu country (India, of course) and got married right out of high school to a dashing young stranger with a motorcycle. His family had all sorts of money, and she went from a middle-class life to one where her servants wouldn't let her do anything on her own. She liked it. She never cooked or cleaned or worried about anything, and supported her own family as well as she could. Then her millionaire husband decided to invest in oil wells in the Carribean and made the horrible mistake of traveling out there to view his new investment. They exploded and killed everyone, leaving Celia to deal with a mother-in-law who had never really liked her in the first place and who kicked her and her child out of their own home with nothing to support themselves.

Celia and Gloria had fortunately made a friend in England, and went to live with him (what his relationship to the both of them is, I'm not sure. It wasn't romantic, more like a mentor) and decided to become a hairdresser. She was apparently very good at it, and supported them until she developed a dangerous allergy to the ammonia used in most of the procedures. She still can't stand most cleaning products, and as a result the two of them have developed an eccentric cleaning method for just about every surface (vinegar for 90% of them, from windows to vehicles). Somehow they made it over to New York, and Gloria and Celia have been inseparable ever since.

They are funny in so many different ways, it's hard to know where to begin. They keep scraps of aluminum foil in their oven to use instead of pan lids (which they have, but never bring out of the cupboard). They keep their few tools in a makeup bag in the very back of the cupboard in the laundry room, ashamed to own such "manly" things. They have covers over every piece of furniture (not plastic, but thick cloth) to protect them from, I suppose, themselves. They save everything, and have a pile of old newspapers in the garage that is four feet high and probably the same in diameter. They give me tracts from the bizarrely cultish brand of Christianity they practice, and tell me which prayers I should pray to get results ranging from a new job to shinier teeth. Gloria has been very upset that I'm not married yet, and has set me up twice now (without my foreknowledge) with 40-ish, unattractive, conservative men who I have frightened off with my youth and boldness. She has lectured both men for being such "wussies" and is actively searching for me again (God help me - what's the prayer I need to pray to avoid that?).

Gloria is also quirky in her fashion sense, and has a Halloween shirt with embroidered ghosts and rhinestones that she wears year-round. When someone on the bus had the nerve to comment on it (in June), she lashed into him and said she could wear her shirt any time she damn well pleased, and that she paid good money for those rhinestones. Celia also sneaks me clothing when Gloria isn't looking, since she's too nice to ask Gloria to return things that she's bought for her. She's slipped me an itchy sweater from Eddie Bauer that I ended up donating to charity, a very nice scarf that she just didn't like, some silk shirts that I have yet to wear, and one very memorable day she gave me some granny underwear that was the wrong size for her but she was sure they'd fit me. I'll have to get a picture of them, they have lace and would go up to my neck if I would ever be desparate enough to put them on.

I love them both, and hope that we can entertain each other for years to come.

posted by LadyJay @ 10:09 AM