‘Sit down, relax, have a cup of coffee’

DAVID SILVA

My mother bought a new car a few months ago. It’s one of those sporty

economy models that gets great gas mileage and can go from zero to 60

in 10 seconds. But this is just theory, because I’ve yet to see the

thing move.

Mom insists she takes the car to work and back -- a round trip of

about four miles -- but most of the time it sits in the driveway and

looks new. I asked her why she refuses to drive it more, and she said

it’s because it’s so new and beautiful that she’s afraid to jinx it.

“It’s just too good to be true,” she says.

The car is the first my mother’s owned with air conditioning,

although you wouldn’t know it because she still hasn’t turned it on.

The past month brought us some of the hottest days of the year, but

she preferred to sweat right through them, telling me that she’d

heard once that air conditioning wastes gas. “I don’t want to get

stranded out there,” she says.

But the real reason she’s reluctant to drive her new car and

refuses to try this remarkable new invention called air conditioning

is because she simply doesn’t do new very well. My mother has a thing

about technology. She is disdainful of gadgetry with a lot of moving

parts, and anything electronic flat-out concerns her. She loves the

look of her new car, loves the idea of having a new car, but would

just as soon not bother with all those fancy new buttons,

thingamajigs and whatchamacallits.

For some reason, technological innovation ended in my mother’s

world sometime around the ‘60s, just late enough to allow for the

high-speed blender. Getting her to accept a microwave oven in her

home required years of negotiations -- it wasn’t until the ‘80s that

she finally broke down and allowed one in the house. For almost a

year after, she wouldn’t let anyone be in the same room with it when

it was on, insisting it would give us brain tumors.

It took my siblings and I even longer to talk her into getting an

answering machine. “What do I need an answering machine for? If they

won’t call back, I don’t want to talk to them anyway!” It wasn’t

until her catering business really took off that she finally broke

down and got a machine.

The very first greeting she recorded on it went like this:

“You ... have ... reached ... uh ... Davey! What’s my number? ...

What? ... Mira, payaso, if I knew the number I wouldn’t ask you for

it! ... What? ... Oh ... five ... eight ... two ... one ... thousand

... Thank you!” Beep.

We’ve completely given up on getting Mom to accept a cellphone.

She sees such gizmos as annoying symbols of a rude and impatient

society. “What’s the rush? Why can’t they wait till they get home?

Me, I like to sit down, relax, have a cup of coffee. Then I’ll make

my phone calls.”

She has a VCR in her living room, but she uses it only during

family gatherings, to watch a movie after we’ve all had dinner. This

is because she insists the only way the VCR will work is if my nephew

Andrew operates it. Andrew, she insists, is the only person on Earth

with the wherewithal to find the play and rewind buttons. She refuses

to operate the machine herself, and won’t let anyone else come near

it. “No! Don’t touch it! You’ll mess it up! Andrew! Come in here and

work the VCR!”

You get the feeling my mother sees every new technological

advancement as another step closer to hell. She scoffs at fax

machines as just one more excuse not to visit. She’s gravely

suspicious of pagers (“Ay, mijo, don’t let the police see you

carrying that -- they’ll think you’re in a gang”). And she worries

personal computers might one day inadvertently trigger a nuclear war

(“Don’t laugh, I saw that movie! It could happen!”).

So you can imagine my surprise several years back when I learned

my mother had gotten a car and had decided she wanted to learn to

drive. It was so completely unlike her, like someone who had always

been terrified of heights suddenly announcing plans to climb Mt.

Whitney.

And I’ll be danged if she didn’t learn how to drive it, going

through two transmissions and a couple of front ends in the process.

My mother drives the way she does just about everything else in life

-- once she gets moving, there’s no stopping her. She’ll get behind

the wheel, buckle up, throw it in reverse and God help anyone still

behind her in the driveway. She’ll get on the road, and God help

anyone who turns into the lane ahead of her. It’s not that she’s a

road hog -- it’s just, well, she was there first, dang it.

I learned all of this through secondhand accounts, through stories

from my sisters and brothers. I, myself, have never been a passenger

in my mother’s car, and plan to keep it that way.

My mother drove that car for years, drove it right into the

ground, and gave up on it only after her mechanic simply refused to

take any more money from her. Finally, she broke down and bought the

new economy car. Which she promptly parked in the driveway and seldom

uses.

I’ve often wondered why my mother acts so completely helpless when

it comes to new things. This, after all, is a woman who raised six

kids virtually on her own, who’s managed large, successful

restaurants and run her own business. And it occurred to me that

maybe part of it, at least, is an act. Change has a way of taking

things away from you, and for my mom, the thing she most wants to

never go away is the company of her children.

By acting like she doesn’t want to spoil her brand-new car by

driving it, for instance, she keeps her kids coming over to drive her

to destinations. By acting like she can’t operate the VCR, she makes

sure her grandson Andrew visits her more often than he otherwise

would. It’s an elaborate scheme, and one that’s served her well over

the years.

“Mijo, isn’t it just beautiful,” my mother said as we stood beside

the new car.

“Yeah, Mom, it’s really nice. Let’s go inside and have some

coffee.”

“Get in, I’ll take you for a spin. You won’t believe how fast it

goes.”

“No, that’s OK, Mom. Let’s just go inside.”

* DAVID SILVA is a Times Community News editor. Reach him at (909)

484-7019, or by e-mail at david.silva@latimes.com.