A House on a Hill

The Bates Motel

My childhood home

     What a great Mother's Day, the celebrations of which, of course are reserved for great mothers like me. Not to say that I was a good mother, but I was at least a prolific one, having spent 7 years in the State of Pregnancy, which is a bit south of Nebraska, and every bit as stimulating.
     And so the fruits of my womb turn their attention to me each May, and despite my veiled protests, shower me with attention and worldly goods. Yesterday was a banner year. Not only did I receive 3 days of pampering in Cincinnati, free meals, and an underground city tour, I was able to watch the entire first season of Bates Motel, uninterrupted. What an experience it was to recall the sheer terror of the movie, Psycho, released when I was 16 years old, and kept me out of the shower until I was 18. That pretty much explains my sparse history of dating.

Norma??????

     But seeing the Bates Motel again brought me a great realization. I lived there! It was when Norman's mother was trying to scrub blood off the concrete stairs that I realized I too lived atop a hill accessible by a long concrete stairway. Then, with spine chills, I remembered that my mother was often seen in the big window, just standing there, staring at the street. Now I'm doubting everything about my childhood in that house. Maybe my mom wasn't Betty Crocker or Joan Crawford. Maybe she was Norma Bates!
     My memory is now flooding with suspicious images. My mother digging large holes in the back yard, her insistence that we get the first garbage disposer in the neighborhood, her obsession with Alfred Hitchcock. It all makes sense now, especially that favorite story she liked to tell whenever we had leg of lamb. It was a Hitchcock story of the mysterious death of a woman's husband, and the two detectives who tried to find the murder weapon, a large blunt object that had struck him on the head. They were graciously served a supper by the grieving widow. The main course was a bone-in 24-inch leg of lamb, roasted to perfection.  As the naive detectives chomped down the delicious meat, only the viewers realized that the detectives were destroying the evidence. The leg of lamb had been frozen as hard as a club until only hours before the meal, and was in fact, the now unrecognizable murder weapon. My mother thought that was a brilliant story. I'm just sayin'.