Que Sera Sera

Heart, banner, Mom

I am fairly certain that the only heart I’ve ever broken has been my mother’s, and I am more than fairly certain that I continue to break it on a daily basis. My mother is a born worrier, and then both my brother and I came along and gave her several legitimate things to worry about, like health problems and emergency surgeries and minor legal incidents and moving to New York. My mother is also a born MacGyver, of both the physical and tactical and emotional realm, and if you give her a crisis and and a length of string and maybe a telephone book and 30 seconds, she can take care of it in 28.

I rarely give my mother the chance to exercise this talent when it comes to me anymore, because I am a Stubborn Daughter of a Different Way of Thinking and feel like I need to Do Everything On My Own, which sounds cruel but really isn’t. My mother and I go about doing things very differently, and sometimes it’s hard for us each to witness the other’s methods. Sometimes it’s more than just hard. However, I do feel bad not letting her flex this miracle-worker muscle often, because it’s really an amazing muscle to be flexed, and I really am so fucking stubborn. So I flew home this weekend for approximately 30 hours and surprised her by hiding in a giant cardboard box on her front porch. Then we celebrated Mother’s Day by letting my mom do whatever she wanted, which surprisingly turned out to be what I wanted and needed but just didn’t know it.

We celebrated Mother’s Day by letting her play with my hair, which has been verboten since the fifth grade. We celebrated Mother’s Day by not text messaging with one hand while not driving the car too fast. We also celebrated Mother’s Day by eating breakfast and lunch and dinner on the back patio, drinking lots of margaritas, going to the used bookstore store as a family and buying old Kinks on vinyl, and falling asleep on the couch in front of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Before I left for the airport, we celebrated Mother’s Day by letting my mom refold and repack everything in my carry-on bag. I did not grit my teeth once, and she never stopped smiling. It was a really fantastic, relaxing weekend, and now I miss home.

Today I am continuing to celebrate Mother’s Day by not telling my mom I had popsicles for dinner, not telling my mom I made a million dumb mistakes at my lame ass temp job today, and definitely not telling my mom that I think something is possibly extremely wrong with one of my internal organs on the lower right side and I’m not going to the doctor about it.

I have to admit, though: when I got back to Brooklyn and unpacked my bag, my clothes were virtually wrinkle-free and actually smelled better than when I left, and I have no idea how to do that on my own.

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