My mother

"How am I supposed to explain my mother to you in ten or twelve minutes?" Agnes asked Christina, knowing full well that Christina's husband would be home at 7:30 a.m. from his night shift and would want to have sex with Christina in the kitchen again.  Agnes would have to leave before then.

"Give me the Cliffs' Notes version of her," replied Christina with a hearty, bosom-y laugh. Christina always used her ample Italian breasts to the greatest advantage.

"She's impossible. The other day, she called me on the phone to tell me that Daddy was sick in the hospital. Had some kind of skin cancer removed and then got violently ill afterward, on the way home. Went on and on about how all the neighbors were coming over after Dad passed out, told me all this stuff about Nilda Weber across the street, all the while Dad is lying on the sofa passed out and throwing up. God knows who these people are, Christina. So here I am, thinking that my father's about to die, and Mom's telling me about the neighbors and their personal issues. So I think, 'Get to the point, Mama!' and finally, five minutes later, after being walked through every pain-staking event of this whole process, she says Daddy's going to be all right. Just in the hospital. Had a bad reaction to an antibiotic."

"She could've said that in four seconds. 'Daddy had a skin cancer removed, had a reaction to the antibiotic, was rushed the hospital, is being treated, will be fine.' End of story."

"Rose Nylund on 'The Golden Girls' told less tedious stories. And hers were funny. That's the difference. If you ask my mother what time it is, she'll build you a Swiss village."

"What does she look like?"

"Rotund and fat. Wasn't always that way. She's almost 78 years old. She blames me for her weight gain when I married Norman fifteen years ago.  Never did like him, and you know why! She's never gotten over the fact that I married an Episcopalian. Just because we were raised Irish Catholic, we're in this country now. Times are different than when she was a little girl -- you know, the Depression, World War II. Things are different now.

"I worry about Mama. She controls Daddy too much and she still tries to control all of us. Imagine that -- I'm 38 years old, the youngest of her six, and she's still running the roost like we were all children. And she mostly succeeded. Why, in a family of five boys and one girl (that's me!) our toilet seats were always down. Imagine that -- six men, two women, and she trained every one of those men, my father included, to leave the toilet seat down."

"How ladylike!" commented Christina.

"Well, that's my mother, and you've got two minutes to prepare yourself for sex in the kitchen with Angelo."

"Oh, Agnes!" exclaimed Christina.

"Oh, Christina! Some time, you know, I wish Norman would just ravish me on our kitchen table. But then perhaps Mama would walk in and discover us ... she was always doing that to me and my brothers when we were growing up. Just walking into our bedrooms. My brothers and their masturbation, they never knew when she'd walk in and 'Surprise! Look what I've found!' would await her."

The door opened. It was Angelo.

"That's my cue to leave. Bye!"