Connect
Connect
How do we do this thing that used to be so natural?
In high school, my mom used to come home around ten and
asked me if I was hungry.
Of course I was.
She would back her red Nissan out of the drive way for a
trip to SS Burger Basket, just down the street.
We sat up together way past eleven watching Jerry Springer,
Cops, Saturday Night Live, In Living Color, while I munched on a quarter pound
burger with a flying saucer sesame bun and crispy steak fries.
She nursed several glasses of red wine.
When I was sixteen and she was forty, it seems I had her to
myself, often.
My little sister was there too, but she was always like an
ant, very social and I was like a spider, reclusive, except for a small handful of friends and a boyfriend. At that time, my mom and I, our work overlapped nicely. We were both on our feet for a good five hours in the evenings. She circulated
around a Coco's diner with bottomless soda glasses while I straightened up
flowery-embroidered sweaters on shelves and buttoned denim shirts onto hangars
in a fitting room at Liz Claiborne Outlet store. We wore matching tan panty hose - me with smart wool slacks
and her with green quarter-length shorts.
Those days, she sank into the couch with her red wine. Putting up her white lace-up tennis shoes on the coffee table next to mine. Somewhere
over the years her glass changed to white. I stuck with fries, milkshakes, and
cereal when I returned and found her on the couch.
Nowadays, the sitting for hours is hard for me. I am no
longer a teenager ravenous for burgers and trashy TV. My mind has cats fighting
inside over concerns stretching from a sweaty angsty son of my own who is
exhibiting signs of a geeky aloof sixth grader, another one three years behind
him who needs a boost to read, a rented house that is being eaten alive by
myriad microorganisms. Haunting, instant replays are fire crackers in my skull of
a first year of teaching at a new school, working with ninth graders where
their eraser throwing, speaker wire cutting, explicit insult permanent carvings
of FXXX Ms. B….. got the worst of me by April.
It has been a harder year for her though. She weathered
bouts of chemotherapy and radiation while I spun from my family and work
responsibilities. By summertime, it’s time I pay homage. I press the purchase
button on the Southwest reservation page, committing to a whole week visit with
her. Should I do this? Can the two of us survive a whole week without causing
irreparable damage to each other? Seven days, in the confines of a home with a
TV the size of Texas at its hearth and a fountain outpouring red and white wine
into two glasses of my mom and her partner of now 17+ years. When did she ever
become so conservative and me a socialist? How did she become addicted to
watching Fox News and me to boiling water for coffee? When did she stop walking
around beyond her home and when did I stop sitting still completely?
I think I need to be with her in order to connect. The only
way is to stay, a while. It will take that long to settle down and be normal.
This is how I reason and push the “buy” button.
Now it is 7 days past and I can say that we struggled,
exploded, stepped over, meshed, waded, cleansed, disciplined, betted,
barbecued, over-reacted, and spun out together. It was just how it would be and
needed to be, I guess.
I see her straining over the chaos I bring when I forget to
use the plastic disposable cups and paper plates. I notice she only gives
bottled water to her kitty bowl these days and demands others do the same. I
cringe at the thought of becoming so crabby. I am worried that anger is a
genetic predisposition when I see her bark at my boys “there will be no eating
in my car”!
Getting older and all of your ugliest pet peeves you manage
to keep down in your chest as a functional middle-aged person seem to bulge out
of you when you pass that predetermined year of “senior”. Where is the smile?
Some joy? Is there any excitement? Do children and grandchildren bring a sense
of adventure and purpose? Or, are we a burden, a responsibility hard to shake
that comes back a couple times a year? Grandchildren who crunch and flip water
bottles seem to stir more than enchant her. I watch her bend over to kiss both
boys on her way to bed tonight. She goes very early tonight at 10. This is
unusual. But tomorrow we will lift off and away to our Bay area homeland and I
know I will feel sick in my stomach to see her pull away from the curb at Long
Beach International Airport. She returns home to a pet scan on Wednesday and
perhaps another Colorado River visit after that, who knows. Us, we go off to a
final month of summer to spend as we wish. Carefully chosen days I want to
remember with love.
posted by Jamilicious Fancy Footwork at
11:23 PM
|
0 comments
