Running errands with mother, I am noticing that her car is experiencing a short delay in starting up. My husband is super busy, so I decide to leave my brother-in-law Bill a message to check mother's car out while he and my sister Sue are visiting on Saturday. Forgetting about the problem, I continue driving mother's car over the following weeks, still noticing the stall in starting but thinking that it must not be something major.
My brother Jay comes for a visit and decides to take mother out to eat at a local diner. Upon leaving, the evil monster finally shows it's head. The car will not start. My brother gets out and fidgets with some things under the hood and is successful in getting it to start.
After several attempts to diagnose the problem, the battery is tested and found to be the culprit. It's Saturday and my husband and I have come to take mother's car to a nearby auto store and have them install a new battery. Mother greets us at the door and we inform her that we will be taking her car over to get a new battery. She offers payment 5 or 6 times, but we convince her that she can pay us later.
We make it to the auto store and get the battery installed. I have wondered to myself several times that I probably should give mother a quick call to remind her that we have taken her car, just in case she goes out to her garage and sees it missing.
We run some other errands in town before returning, but we haven't been gone that long. Since we have mother's car, her garage opener is at hand and my husband opens the garage door. We can see mother coming out of the kitchen door with a grin on her face. As I exit the car, I tell her that everything has been taken care of and the car runs good now. She seems to know what I mean, but acts a little peculiar. She invites us in and comments that she has several sandwiches she can feed us if we're hungry. I tell her no thanks, that I made those sandwiches for her to eat. That response seems to settle her, so we say our goodbyes and leave. On the way home, I comment to my husband that I don't believe that mother recognized us.
It just so happened that our church was having a "Poor man's supper" later in the day and being that mother really likes country style food, I go up and get her a plate with all the fixings. As I pull up to her house, I see the garage door opening slowly. She has a bewildered look on her face and says to me, "Where in the world did those girls put my car keys?" I ask her, "what girls?" She replies that "they must have been some of mine, cause one of them looked like me." I began to put the puzzle pieces together and realize that she was talking about when my husband and I had brought her car home earlier in the day from getting the battery. For some reason, mother could not see us as Bob and Jean, her daughter and son-in-law, but instead, she had seen two young girls driving her car.
I have experienced many instances like this before with mother, where she sees one thing and thinks it's something else. I am fairly confident it won't be the last!
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