Awkward

 

Morning:

“We leave at 8pm!” – Virna

6:30pm, the same day:

Virna gets back from wherever she was. I think she was getting her hair and nails done. “Are you ready?”

“I thought we were leaving at 8pm.”

“No, that’s when the party starts. We are leaving at 7:30pm to pick up Mamãe (her mom) and then we will go to the party.”

“Okay, I need to take a shower.”

Virna proceeds to spend approximately forever in the bathroom, and I finally jump into the shower at around 7:15 or so, washing up, putting on a dress, and doing hair and makeup in record time, managing to be done right around 7:30. While I was getting dressed, I heard Virna say, “So we are just waiting for Claire, right?”

7:30pm:

Veera, Chiara, and I are ready, and waiting on the couches in front of the door. Virna spends the next thirty minutes nattering around the house, doing I don’t know what, calling Mamãe, and doing more random things of nothingness.

8pm:

We leave the house, at the time Virna originally stated. We pick up Mamãe and head over to the ninetieth birthday party of the mother of Virna’s ex-husband.

We walk into the venue of the birthday party, thus starting the most awkward walk of my life. There were two lines of tables, with an isle in the middle that we had to walk down in order to get to our table. We arrived later than most of the people at the party, and alone, so everyone was staring at us as we navigated our way to our table.

One thing to know about Mamãe – she is elderly and infirm and requires support to walk. She is also like a crow attracted to shiny objects. The shiny objects in this case were Mamãe’s many acquaintances, whom she had to walk over to in order to greet, despite many efforts to convince her to go sit down and let her completely abled friends come to her. Being Mamãe’s support, I was dragged along. This meant that the twenty foot walk from the entrance to our table took about five excruciatingly long minutes. Five minutes during which everyone in the entire room stared at us. It was like we were in a zoo – who were these foreign looking girls? Veera, Chiara, and I exchanged glances, and then proceeded to pretend that we didn’t have any idea that about forty people were staring at us and whispering.

Later that night, after the birthday song had been sung and best wishes exchanged, Virna told the three of us that we would leave now, and to go wait by the door, while she helped Mamãe. After about fifteen minutes, we migrated to the couches right by the door, waiting for another fifteen minutes until we finally left.