still moar
April 2009
I come over after a long day of doing menial office work (answering phones, filing papers, entering spreadsheets) to find heaps of my parents' belongings out on the curb, ready for the garbage. I look and examine the wreckage. Textbooks, magazine clippings, pages of notes. They are mostly my father's. They are mostly unmistakable. My mother does not care for such things.
Still. I'm confused. My exhaustion only adds to this. I hover over the hodgepodge and grab some things to salvage. Things that haven't been completely soaked by the relentless rain.
"Mom?" I say when I carefully creak open the garage door. I hear opera blasting, something screeching Italian. I've never been a big opera buff, apologetically.
"In here!" she yells. I follow the voice to the family room, where she is down on her knees sorting this and that into ever-growing piles. My eyes widen. Everything from trinkets to family heirlooms to photographs to clothing. All being divided as if she was a Nazi guard, separating them at gunpoint.
"What are you...?" I yawn.
"Long day at the office?" she asks, though her interest doesn't lie in the question. It's a tactic. My mother loves to avoid subjects when she can, to dance around them to no end.
"Well I've been up since 5. So yeah. But what is this? And what's with the trash?"
"Purging," she explains. "I need to."
Her eyes are closed and her hair's pulled back into a schoolgirl-esque ponytail. I look over at some of my father’s old tennis trophies, from when he was my age. I put my hand on them and feel the faded metal. I try to imagine when they were small and used to catch the sunlight so perfectly, like a baseball jammed into a mitt. I used to stare at them and drool a little. My father abandoned them, in life and in death. My mother did not want them.
“You can have those,” she offers. She coughs in passing; I realize she has lost some weight in her face. “You always loved them anyway.”
There is a certain bitterness meandering there. I take them home.
Later that night, after I’ve made my pitiful excuse for a dinner when I hear a knock at my door. Upon opening it, I see my mother. She’s like a lost child.
“Hi,” she says. I ask no questions and let her in. She is my mother, after all.
When she sleeps on my couch, I drop the blanket on her. Roles reversed; I notice my father’s favorite sweater wrapped up in her arms.
I come over after a long day of doing menial office work (answering phones, filing papers, entering spreadsheets) to find heaps of my parents' belongings out on the curb, ready for the garbage. I look and examine the wreckage. Textbooks, magazine clippings, pages of notes. They are mostly my father's. They are mostly unmistakable. My mother does not care for such things.
Still. I'm confused. My exhaustion only adds to this. I hover over the hodgepodge and grab some things to salvage. Things that haven't been completely soaked by the relentless rain.
"Mom?" I say when I carefully creak open the garage door. I hear opera blasting, something screeching Italian. I've never been a big opera buff, apologetically.
"In here!" she yells. I follow the voice to the family room, where she is down on her knees sorting this and that into ever-growing piles. My eyes widen. Everything from trinkets to family heirlooms to photographs to clothing. All being divided as if she was a Nazi guard, separating them at gunpoint.
"What are you...?" I yawn.
"Long day at the office?" she asks, though her interest doesn't lie in the question. It's a tactic. My mother loves to avoid subjects when she can, to dance around them to no end.
"Well I've been up since 5. So yeah. But what is this? And what's with the trash?"
"Purging," she explains. "I need to."
Her eyes are closed and her hair's pulled back into a schoolgirl-esque ponytail. I look over at some of my father’s old tennis trophies, from when he was my age. I put my hand on them and feel the faded metal. I try to imagine when they were small and used to catch the sunlight so perfectly, like a baseball jammed into a mitt. I used to stare at them and drool a little. My father abandoned them, in life and in death. My mother did not want them.
“You can have those,” she offers. She coughs in passing; I realize she has lost some weight in her face. “You always loved them anyway.”
There is a certain bitterness meandering there. I take them home.
Later that night, after I’ve made my pitiful excuse for a dinner when I hear a knock at my door. Upon opening it, I see my mother. She’s like a lost child.
“Hi,” she says. I ask no questions and let her in. She is my mother, after all.
When she sleeps on my couch, I drop the blanket on her. Roles reversed; I notice my father’s favorite sweater wrapped up in her arms.
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