Why?

The twenty-six-mile drive to Orange County from Koreatown on Sunday morning was a California cliché.

I had all the windows down blaring a pre-halftime Bad Bunny. Who knew Benito was the halftime show America needed so badly. A dose of artistic joy to counter the fuckery currently governing our lives.

While some parts of the country are suffering below freezing temperatures, it was a clear eighty-four degrees on the Golden State Freeway.

There was an accident just past the 605, so I get off in Norwalk and take Imperial Highway (even the name of the road is epic).

I call Chuy, who told me all about his evening at the Santa Fe Drive-In Swap Meet, where he and Juan went to see a tribute band called ‘Fan Halen’. The lead singer was too old to jump but otherwise sounded like the real thing.

I might have been a little early for Mrs. Alfaro, who was deep asleep in her bedroom.

I walk in, open the blinds, turn on the light, put on the free cable (a Designing Women marathon is on), and not a peep from Mrs. Alfaro.

When your mother is eighty-eight, and deep into her journey with the Forgetting Condition, the first thought is not whether she overslept, but whether she is alive at all.

A foot is sticking out from under the covers, and I tickle the bottom as she murmurs.

Okay, she’s alive. It’s going to be a great day.

I sit on the daybed and wait, watching Julia Sugarbaker give one of her award-winning rants to a nasty guest star.

Mrs. Alfaro finally wakes, puts on her glasses, looks over at me and says, “Estas vivo or muerto?” (are you dead or alive?). I confirm I am alive and she says, “Then I have to get up.”

Even though there is a morning routine, it doesn’t always go as planned.

I get the icky hard part out of the way first. I help her put on her shoes, and then we change her underwear together. The less we talk and negotiate, the easier the whole strange ritual becomes.

I pick out a lovely outfit from her closet and lead her to the bathroom to change and wash up.

I see her brushing her teeth and combing her hair, and then she closes the door to change or use the toilet.

I go back to Designing Women and remember meeting the actors Dixie Carter, Jean Smart, Meshach Taylor, and Alice Ghostley during my time at the Mark Taper Forum theater.

I hear the bathroom door open, and Mrs. Alfaro enters the bedroom, still dressed in her nightgown, a long sleeve dark blue cotton caftan that people like Shelly Winters used to wear on the Mike Douglas Show in the 1970’s.

I cut to the quick, “Mother, you have to change, you can’t wear that to go out.”

She looks genuinely perplexed at me, touching her nightgown, as she says, “Why?”

Oh my god. The minute she says it, I am transported.

It’s not that she said it, but ‘how’ she said it that sends me down memory lane.

“Why?”

She sounds exactly, in tone and delivery, like that disagreeable High School student of the past, Luis Alfaro.

Is she mocking me? It’s been decades. I remember the argument like it was just yesterday.

I woke up one rebellious morning and sincerely wondered why I could not wear my pajamas to school.

Who was I trying to please? What societal norm was I being pushed into? Why not anarchy?

“Why?” I asked.

What can I say, I was an artist and a teenager. And unlike the sweet adult caretaker I have become, the mother of my youth was much more undisturbed, “Fine, go naked, what do I care. But if they send you home, I am not picking you up.”

So, off to Wilson High School in El Sereno I went in my pajamas.

My High School counselor, Mr. Fraga, a friend of my mother’s, who used to take me to see foreign films in Beverly Hills on Saturday nights, part of my family in a way, pulled me aside in the hall and broke into quick Cuban Spanish, “What system are you against today? Do you think this is cool? This is not cool, Luisito. Why do you make your mother crazy?”

Everyone laughed at me, but I was quite satisfied with myself knowing I hopped out of bed and went straight into selling pencils and Pee-Chee folders in the Student Store without a costume change.

I was young, no one found my pajama antics cool or trendy. I never wore them again.

I look at Mrs. Alfaro now, standing her ground, holding the handles on her walker, ready to go.

I smile and say, “It’s your night gown, you just slept in it.”

And she responds, “So.”

Normally, this is the moment where I cut to the quick and tell her to raise her arms as I make a quick change in garments.

But it’s a beautiful stress-free Super Bowl Sunday, the world is a mess, folks are preparing their dips and BBQs, and she’s more than likely going to sit in the car while I run all the errands anyway.

Sitting in my car, she looks vaguely Victorian. It’s a style.

I was hoping to spend the day in East L.A., hitting the family businesses and specialty shops, but decide that Baby Jane and I should probably stick closer to home and explore Anaheim for breakfast, pan dulce, and the like.

I had been wanting to go to a small panaderia in Anaheim on Lincoln and Ohio called La Pequena. It’s a strange tiny storefront that feels like it might have once been a check cashing place because all the bread is behind a clear plastic sheet. A bakery person is retrieving your items as you call them out.

I never think much of my Spanish, but even I was impressed at knowing my pan dulce items (un cuernito, un puerquito, una chilidrina, una concha y un elote, por favor).

You turn to one side and there is a small opening to pay and receive your bread.

I walked out and next to the bakery was a liquor store with a large table in front selling hot items. There was a nice couple pulling stuff out of their van and placing them on the table. I asked what they had, and he said menudo, chicharron, and carnitas. I ordered a menudo.

We started chatting in Spanish. They make all their own food and have a deal with the liquor store to sell it in front. He asked me to break off a piece of chicharron and taste it ‘like they do at Costco’.

We are speaking quickly, so I apologize for my Chicano Spanish. Being such kind folks, the man remarked, “Your Spanish is very good, very relaxed, friendly, although I can tell you are from here.”

I try my hand at some Mexico City slang, and they laugh at me as the man offers, “Ni di aqui, ni de alla” (neither here nor there).

Never has that term had more meaning for me. I was raised as a Mexican, but born in the U.S., and so vilified as a culture in this country these days.

The man pointed to my car, “Is that your mother?”.

I look over and Mrs. Alfaro is waving for me to come. I excuse myself and run over.

I lean into the passenger window and ask Mrs. Alfaro if she’s okay. She says yes, but asks, “Why am I wearing my camison (nightgown)?”

Is this some karmic retribution?

I go back to get my food and am directed to pay for it in the liquor store.

Mrs. Alfaro and I continue our adventures over on Orangethorpe and Harbor in Fullerton, at a newly opened Korean fast-food burger drive thru from Seoul called Lotteria, billed as the Korean McDonald’s, pronounced in a red, yellow and green design.

I explain the concept to Mrs. Alfaro who just wants to know what we’re getting.

Against my better judgement, I was trying to get her to share a bulgogi burger, but instead she wanted the shrimp burger. It’s more in the Carl’s Jr landscape for you fast food connoisseurs. A buttered soft bun, lettuce, tomato, heavy on a thousand island dressing, and said shrimp patty, chunky and just okay.

We went over to B&B to wash it down with a drink and I was surprised she agreed to split a taro boba with me.

Every time she would suck up a boba she would say, “Oh!”, chew on it and go, “Oh…” It was fascinating.

Last week, she had a piece of spaghetti that dangled from her mouth while she ever so slowly slurped it up. It was driving me insane. Some days I think she’s just taunting me.

Yesterday, I finally had to say, “Mother, eat that boba and stop playing with it.”

She very sweetly pulled out a napkin and spit the boba into it. She informed me in Spanish, “You’re not my mother”, reaching for the drink, as she slurped up another boba.

I screamed in the car, “But you are my mother, and you’re not acting like it!”

We both started laughing at the ridiculousness of that statement.

As this damn disease goes, she realized something, stopped laughing, and said in Spanish, “Oh God, why am I wearing my nightgown?”

“You asked for it” I smiled as I drove, feeling like I got the last laugh in an unfunny game.

Of course, she drank all the boba.