Retroactively translating my father, I would say what he was trying to say was something along the lines of her reality comes from outside herself-- she's around other people and she gauges what she says and does by their reaction to it not some sort of internal North Star.  But even that, which I might have understood, is a little vague and doesn't begin to describe the situation.  Let me give you an example.

I myself have a problem with stuff.  I form an emotional attachment to the stuff and it represents all kind of things for me.  But that does not seem to be the relationship that my mother has to stuff.  Oh btdubs she's a hoarder.  And I was saying to her you know when I'm looking at my stuff I have an emotional attachment to it but that doesn't seem to be what's going on with you I don't really understand what is your connection to this stuff.

"What you don't understand" she says "is it most of this stuff represents something that I was trying to achieve in my life and getting rid of it means I have to let go of my dreams."

"Well, I mean, I see how that can be true of the books on public speaking perhaps but I don't see how that applies to the boxes and boxes of dirty soiled fabric and the many jars of buttons."

"The first thing I ever wanted to be was a dress designer" she says with this tone that kind of implies a back of the hand to the forehead and a slight swooning.  Like I know that was something she may be wanted to do as a kid but I'm pretty sure she was over it before she got out of high school.  By which I mean I think this is an act.  I offered information about myself she one upped it and created this fantasy that I can't say anything to, right.

But then the other day we were in the garage.  We found a box of old handmade dresses that I feel like she must have made, and I asked her if she wanted any of it, did she want to look at it, although, I mean, she had handed me the box.

"I don't want any of that crap," she says, although if the other day reality was true this is one of her first dreams that she's having to throw away.

I find it inconsistently unbelievable, by which I mean the inconsistency is what makes it unbelievable not that the unbelievability is inconsistent.

Same day in the garage, she shows me this quilt topper, that that is the decorative part of the quilt that goes on the top but then you have to do a bottom and padding in between and do the whole quilting process so a quilt topper might be pretty or it might not be pretty but if you don't know how to quilt it isn't much use to you.  This quilt topper is something that her sister Shirley bought probably from a garage sale somewhere.  It's not something my mother made or surely made or anybody they know made it's just a thing that could potentially be pretty but that isn't actually a thing it's a potential thing.  And she's asking me if I think it's pretty if I want it if I think we should keep it.

"Do you know how to quilt?"

"Fuck no."

"Do you plan to learn to quilt?"

"Fuck no, I don't want to ruin my hands."

"Do you want to pay to have someone else finish it?"

"Fuck no."

"Well I don't want it.  I'm not even sure I think it's pretty."

"Fine.  Donate."

This was like a whole conversation that ended in her sounding like she was somewhat mad at me for not wanting to save the quilt topper.  She had no connection to the quilt topper at all it wasn't hers it had never been hers. 

Do you remember back in the pandemic when Trump was doing the pressers everyday?  And every day he would come and say something that seemed like the reality of the day before had been completely wiped away and now we were in a completely different situation?  That's what being around my mother everyday is like.

And in fact the more inherent value something has the less likely she seems to be attached to it.  There's a table in the kitchen.  I don't remember when she got the table I think it was sometime when I was in high school so it's an old table.  It's not anything that would probably ever be considered an antique though.  It's one of those reasonably inexpensive faux farmhouse style tables from the early '80s.  So if it were cleaned up and in beautiful condition no one would want to buy it.  But this table is not.  She cannot throw away food waste.  It must be recycled.  But she doesn't really like to walk out and put it in the yard.  So there was like a pile of rotting fruit peels on this table, which I cleaned up and scrubbed really hard, but that was not enough to remove the stains to the wood which are seeped way in.  Now maybe if you got one of those electrical sanders and you sanded and sanded and sanded and sanded and sanded and sanded it back, and then dyed it a dark colored wood, and then scrubbed the rest of the table to remove the years of filth, you would have done a lot of work and at the end of it you would have something that was worth its utilitarian value as a table.

And she agreed that we don't have to bring the table to the new place.  But she keeps trying to find ways that we need the table.