Mummys day out

My mother and many woman of her time,lived lives that were totally dependent on first their parents,then their husbands and finally their children.The were provided for by and large and should a husband not provide,then they had made a bad marriage and the parents or their fate was the cause,if it were a good marriage and good fate then the husband would have provided all.
All their lives were spent that way,they are great mothers,perfect wives but where they happy or did they waste the one life they had in the services of duty and family.I am never sure how to answer that question especially when marriages lasted 60 and more years.They had to be doing something right.
Now my mother for instance will always lament her fate at being married to a man who was not quiet what she imagined a husband to be(some truth no doubt).The fact however remains that my father took on all the financial responsibilities and my mother took care of running the house and bringing up children.Some time later when she was in her 50s,my mother like most women of her generation she decided to give up going out of the house for anything.She got used to being house bound and watching tv and yelling at my father for getting under her feet all the time and interfering(that's what men do when they retire and have no office to go to and no people to yell at)Over the years getting my mother to step out of the front door was a task that would put every skill of strategist to good use.If anyone managed to get her out of the house,even to visit her daughters,it was considered a big victory and the person concerned would well qualify for a noble price in blackmail.Which is precisely what works with her.
Now being left in the charge of a 76 year old mother (who under all that dependence can be as stubborn as a mule)I have become adept in the art of emotional blackmail.So today after having thought through the night on a game plan,I decided to go ahead.Of course no surprised are allowed so she was told that the bank needed to see her in person(no such requirement exists).She was warned of dire consequences(I did tell her her bank account would be frozen and all her money given away...which she believed)I was ready to take the plunge.Now anyone reading this might think that i am a nasty daughter who is harassing a senior citizen.Far from it.
Imagine my despair when the papers reported that bank employees were on strike.Well having hidden the papers from her I proceeded to get ready and finally after much wasting of time and constant grumbling,she was out of the front door and to the bank.Well you can imagine,not a soul stir ed in the bank and me,I was most surprised."Oh it looks like a strike doesn't it" I said with the innocence of a 5 year old(assuming they are innocent nowadays).Well "we just have to go back I guess" says she.Was I going to allow that?.Of course not.Opportunities come only once and now that the mother was out in the open I was going to cash in big time."we shall visit some family friends" I say.Huge protest (which are promptly ignored) and long face and sulk sulk.Well there are some advantages of being the driver so i drive to the friends house (all the time telling her that its bad manners to talk to people only when you need them....she refuses to accept that she does any such thing)and escape on the pretext of having to run errands.Half an hour later I am back to fetch her and she seems happy enough to have gossiped and had a good cup of tea(Oh they managed to make good tea says she....huge compliment coming from her and to be taken as...oh the outing wasn't too bad).So we manage to be back home in time for her tv serial (where everyone cries because they have bad marriages and bad fate),she get back into her glad rags and yours truly is tired by the sheer enormity of what she has accomplished.Friday being another day,we shall get her out again because the bank work is not over,but the sly mother has figured out that her equally sly daughter may not have been speaking the whole truth when she swore blind that the bank wanted her there in person.So for now she has promised to sigh cheque and reduce me back to my status of errand boy to a very lovable by adamant mother.