Something was off. Ever since Sam got home from the mental hospital, she noticed that her parents were
acting strangely. She knew they were shocked at her serious attempt at suicide (overdose by mixing pills,
vodka, and cutting her wrists in a bathtub) and so she expected them to frequently check on her for safety
reasons. But, she also noticed some small differences in the way they did things, which was out of the
ordinary. For example, her mother always made Green Chicken Enchiladas using an old recipe she got
from grandma. It was a rich dish, with sour cream, green chilis, Monterey Jack cheese, coriander spice
and corn tortillas, among other ingredients. Usually, one serving would fill Sam up and she would be
satisfied for a long time. However, last night, her mother served Green Chicken Enchiladas and Sam was
struck by how different they tasted. They were not as flavorful and much lighter in the stomach. Sam
asked her mother if she had done something different, and her mother acted like she had slapped her. “Oh!
Well, I found a variation of the recipe in Better Homes and Gardens with less fat so I thought it would be
healthier and it still tastes just as good, doesn’t it?” When Sam asked about what was different in the
recipe, her mother seemed to struggle to answer her questions.
Suspicion grew in Sam’s mind. Mom and Dad still looked the same. Both in their sixies, a few pounds
overweight but nothing extreme. They were still physically active and kept up their garden, walked their
dogs, attended functions with friends, and went for walks in the evening after dinner. Why were they so
health-conscious now? Odd. Then, Sam noticed a change in her mother’s appearance. Her mother was
usually conservatively dressed, wearing long sleeves and pants, comfortable walking shoes, very little
makeup, and had her hair styled in a typical short bubble hair style that many older women had. She dyed
her hair blonde to hide the gray and had for years. Last Friday, when her mother and father went to meet
friends for drinks for their “Beer Drinking Group” on Fridays, her mother had been wearing a tropical
print dress with sandals! “My mother would never wear that,” Sam thought. What is going on? She asked
her mother about her outfit and she stated the dress had been given to her by a friend and she liked it.
Besides, it was just Friday night “Beer Drinking Group” she was attending, so who cares? Her mother
said she was ready to “let loose” after all these years. That was her explanation. Um, OK, That didn’t
make sense. Sam was not ready for her mother to change her hair and makeup style, but she did that next.
During her mother’s next hair appointment, a new stylist had suggested a different cut and color, and had
also redone her makeup to refresh her look. When Sam saw her at home, she was shocked. “This person
doesn’t even look like my mother anymore,” she thought. The Pixie haircut, the Navy blue eyeliner, gray
eye shadow, the dark lipstick-none of it was something her mother would wear. Certainly not in public.
Maybe at Halloween. When Sam approached her father about the changes in her mother, her father
rebuffed her. “What’s wrong with your mother having some fun after all these years? She’s just doing
things she never got to do when she was a young girl. You know how your grandma was.” Sam thought
that her grandma was a strict Holy Roller Baptist, but she didn’t see anything wrong with that. Her
grandma had raised her Mom to be a good one, always home when she got home from school, keeping
the house clean, cooking great meals, and taking good care of Sam. Her grandma was just not educated on
mental illness. When Sam made her first suicide attempt at age 9 because of the voices, her grandma said
she was “possessed” and “needed to accept Jesus in her heart” and then everything would be fine. She
rejected that Sam actually needed psychoactive medications and encouraged Sam not to take them but
instead to pray and read the Bible daily for hours. Sam kind of liked this, finding it soothing and she hated
the side effects of the Risperdal she was supposed to take. It made her groggy, her mouth dry and her
mood blah. When she wasn’t on medication, she felt so much more alive, like herself again, not numb.
She could feel everything! She hated feeling numb. Grandma had died of an aneurysm while Sam was in
the hospital this past time, and so she could not go to the funeral. Her mother took pictures of the service
and of family who attended, but this also made Sam suspicious. Who takes pictures of a funeral? Why
couldn’t I have left the hospital for a couple of hours to attend the funeral? It was local. Her parents would
have taken her and brought her back. WTF was that about? Did her grandma even die?
The last straw was when her mother started talking about redecorating the house or even selling it and
moving to a new one! Sam found her family home comforting and a place she could always return to,
after having her “episodes” which were coming on more frequently as she aged. Sam made a last-ditch
effort to talk to her mother about this and all the other changes, but her mother just reassured her she
would always take of Sam, no matter where they lived or what her mother wore or how she looked. The
family home didn’t matter to her mother. Her father was on board with this plan too, so Sam knew she had
to do something drastic. She was no longer certain that her parents were really her parents. They both
seemed so different after her last admission to the hospital. What happened? Who were they really? She
had to find out.
Percolations 