THE BEST $250 EVER SPENT

"How beautiful your light shines when you let yourself love and be loved. You burn as bright as the sun...." -L.B. Simmons

She was a creature of the night. So I believed. She would stay up ironing, till the  wee hours of the morning. She  loved to watch late night movies . Or late night Glen Campbell concerts. But she especially loved Rambo movies. All in black and white on an 18 inch screen.They were spell binding.  

I could hear the rat a tat tat of gunfire coming from the tv screen.  If I peaked in at the door I could see my mother scrunched up to the set, a cup of tea in hand.

 Our set was old. Only half of the screen worked. The other half was a bunch of black wavy lines. So Rambo  was  a disembodied head.  But my mother loved the movies, just the same.

Night after night my mother  sat by the old tv.  Little by little the screen disappeared. You could only see Rambo’s eyes and top of his head.  Then eventually the tv just stopped . 

For months that tv sat in the corner. My mother missed her Rambo movies. I read a lot of books. 

She still ironed into the wee hours, but now she turned up the radio  to the light opera channel. She couldn’t sing a note. But she tried. She sang along with all of the songs. She so dearly wanted to be a singer. She’d warble away into the night. She told me once she always wanted music lessons. She gave all the lessons to me. And she still sang.

It used to drive me nuts. So out of tune. But it was actually beautiful. She sang with abandon and with purpose. She sang from her heart while she listened along with the radio. I never appreciated it till years later.

Unfortunately, the tv set being broken meant that I had extra chores to do. While my mother sat by the radio and sang. Morning. Noon and Night. 

She was retired by now and she’d found her voice, I guess. She sang mostly songs from Gilbert and Sullivan. Her favourite was the one that went “ I am the captain of the Pinafore…”. She’d sing that over and over . Then she’d switch to the Mikado. Days of it. Nights of it.

Then the radio broke. YAY.

But then there was no radio and no tv.  No Rambo. No Gilbert and Sullivan. What to do….

A sale  on televisions came about at the local department store.  $250 for a 22 inch set.  My mother took out her envelope where she stored her money.  She counted out  the bills. Carefully. She left enough to get groceries that weekend. 

It was a midnight madness sale at the store.  We toodled down with the car at ten pm. Chose a tv. A COLOUR tv. With a long cord and no antenna.  This one came with a channel changer. My mother wasn’t too sure what that was. The newest technology.  The tv man  plopped the box into our car. We toodled home. 

Somehow we shuffled it  up the back steps into the kitchen.  The old tv was currently sitting in the corner as a shoe rack. I hoped it didn’t mind the new tv taking it’s old place.  We plugged it in. 

Poof. Magic. Rambo was on channel six.  In COLOUR. We just sat there and took in the fact that Rambo had legs.

That tv had four channels.  It was a new experience for us. For months to come. 

I thought my mother’s singing  in the night was over. But no.

In the wee hours, I heard her singing  along with Glen Campbell on the tv. He had a show.  She was out of tune. Her rhythm was off. But she sang from her heart. It was probably the best $250  ever spent…..

Photographs 2022