What the Hell is This?!?!

This weekend we decided to do a short Christmas shopping getaway - just the girls. The holly, the spirit of Christmas, the snow, the generosity...it was all in the air that day.

After a long day of shopping for friends and family, we pulled up to the front of the hotel where we were staying to let my grandmother out of the car. She had bad hips (this was before she got her new ones!).

She gets out of the car and closes the door.

About three seconds after the door closed, my mom whipped her head around to look at my sister and me. Her eyes were wide and full of terror. She doesn't say anything for a few seconds. She's still thinking. But, she looks absolutely deranged. I mean, you know my mom is a bit crazy... but this was something a lot more terrifying. She was so scared. The kind of scared where she knew something horrible was afoot but she couldn't place her finger on it. She knew it was bad, really bad, but she didn't understand why exactly.

She holds up a scarf in her hand. She pushes it towards us so that we can see it clearly, her eyes pleading for us to help. For us to explain the horror in her hand. She suddenly shouts..."WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!?!?!"

Honestly, I don't understand what's happening. I look at my sister thinking, it's a scarf, right?

Our pause is too long, we don't answer her fast enough. She shows us the scarf again and then grabs the scarf on her neck tightly and pulls it out so we can see. She continues to shout, her voice loud and panicked - "IT'S ON MY NECK, BUT IT'S IN MY HANDS.....I DON'T UNDERSTAND!?!?!?!?"

Okay...now I am seeing something....I'm piecing this together. The scarf in her hand looks very much like the scarf on her neck.

So, I'm realizing she's holding up my grandmother's scarf which was made by the same person that made her scarf. Grandma must have left it in her seat when she got out. My mom must not have noticed grandma wearing it all day. The scarf is definitely similar to my mom's. Mind you, it is not an exact replica. But to be fair - they were pretty close.

Well...let's see where this leads.

Her face shows that she is still trying to come to grips with this, trying to understand. She looks like she's just seen the sky open up, a rip in space, and a scarf from some alternate reality has dropped right into the passenger seat next to her. I know my mom, trust me, that is probably not far off from what she's thinking.

Once, when I was in high school, my mom saw the northern lights (we live in New York, so this was a very rare event). When it happened, she came running into me terrified. She asked me to come out to look at the sky, she was worried the world was ending. I had to explain to her that it looked like it might be the northern lights. But that's my mom...she jumps to extreme explanations. She's not an "Occam's Razor" kind of person. This is what causes her to utterly freak out in seemingly normal situations.

This scarf thing was just beyond her understanding. How could the scarf be in two places at once. All logic was unraveling around her.

She gripped the scarf harder - still in shock. She must have realized that she wasn't going to get any answers from my sister or me. It was totally and utterly hopeless. She turned around, towards the windshield and pressed her foot down on the gas. She drove straight ahead, right into a median about 20 feet in front of her.

The car stops. We're on the median. She says in a much lower voice, almost like she is just talking to herself, "I just don't understand."

As we sat there, stuck on the median, I put my hand on her shoulder to comfort her. I tell her "I think maybe that's grandma's scarf."