I’m sitting now in front of my computer at home, well after my Monday work day has finished. It’s not often I enjoy Mondays and this day is no different from all the other Mondays that have come before. Normally, while I might have bemoaned today simply because it is a Monday, that’s not the case today. This morning, my mom left New York, and so I am a little down in the dumps.
I know this blog is called “Oh, the possibilities!” and that it’s supposed to be uplifting and positive. But let me qualify my first paragraph by saying that the only reason I’m down in the dumps is because of how wondrous this weekend with her was. It’s been a full three months since I’d seen her last, at which point she was still frail from this summer’s treatments, so I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t nervous about seeing her again. How much of my help would she need? How much extra time would she need to get ready in the morning? Would her bones stick out of her skin like metal coat hangers through a silk shirt? I was nervous, and my own appearance probably showed how frazzled I actually was: pink flip flops, jeans rolled up like I’d been wading in a river all afternoon, a purple “Yes We Can” Obama shirt, and a green canvas jacket. All this topped off with glasses (that’s a bad thing) and my bangs pulled all the way back (even worse.) I paced the arrivals area like a panther and finally got kicked out of the booth where magazines are sold because, as the employee informed me, “Miss, we have a policy that if you are reading a magazine, you are reading it.” The italicized reading, of course, implied that I should be buying the magazine, and rather than politely put it back on the rack or enter into any kind of civil conversation with the man who was, for the record, just doing his job, I mustered all my bitchery and slammed closed the article about Katie Holmes, threw the mag on the rack, said “Yep” to the guy, and walked away. Not much bitchery, I confess, but for a Thursday night I was a top notch asshole and definitely deserved any kind of name the man may have muttered under his breath as he stared at the back of my head. From across the twelve foot hallway, I glared back at his general direction, not totally brave enough to make eye contact. (This, I think, is called being “passive aggressive.”)
And what of my mother? I waited. Every few minutes my eyes would dart to the gate where I saw passenger after passenger greet friends or family or, more often, just walk out alone greeted by no one and exit the building. Where was my mother? Had something gone wrong? Was she getting wheeled out in a wheel chair attached to tubes and oxygen tanks? I paced some more. And glared only when I knew the man wasn’t looking. Next to the magazine booth there was a rack of pamphlets: hundreds and thousands of informational pamphlets about tours and exhibitions and hotels. I took note there was no employee or security guard present who would care if I were reading the pamphlets and so I gathered a few in my hands and read them thoughtfully, more thoughtfully than I would have done had I not just been kicked out of the magazine booth. Thus, thumbing through stacks of cardstock advertising the Top of the Rock Observation Deck with a $2 coupon, the Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises, and a Free Wall Street Walking Tour, I came across a brown tri-fold marked “The Chocolate Show: November 7-9.”
Our weekend was planned.
If only my mother would arrive.
And, lo and behold, she did.
One of the greatest gifts I have is the gift of exaggeration. Trust me, it induces my mother’s gag reflex when I harness all its powers and release a description to the eager ears of listeners to my stories. But this gift came from somewhere (likely developed in utero as my embryonic tail split into legs that never really grew much longer than the two inches they were right there in the womb) and if the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree then we can all safely point our fingers at my mother and say a resounding: “She learned it by watching you!” In any case, as much as I love to utilize exaggeration (or, as the highly literate might call it, “hyperbole,” and this blog is clearly for the highly literate, so congratulations) I cannot use it here. Although this next statement might sound hyperbolic, it most definitely is not.
The woman–my mother–has never looked better in her entire life.
Granted, I haven’t been around for her entire life, but in the part of her life in which we have been acquainted, I’ve never had a more beautiful, more vibrant, more courageous, more fabulously dressed mother.
She was wearing jeans! REAL jeans! Not “mom” jeans. Real jeans. And a shirt with bright flowers and very tasteful sparkly beads. And—–biggest shock of all——new shoes.
Not to mention the fact that her hair, having fallen out a month or so ago, is now coming in salt and pepper rabbit fur. She is the hippest, coolest mom and I swear to you: I envied her her hair. I spent more than a few minutes over the weekend imagining what I’d look like if I cut it like hers and concluded that if I did take scissors to scalp in the style a-la-Mama, I would look like the son she never had.
After a few welcoming tears and more than a few OMGs, we went home to Queens and commenced our mother-daughter-occasionally boyfriend weekend. I’ll just re-cap here because I know my mom on her blog will painstakingly recount each passing minute, including the several times when Dennis and I fell asleep on the couch before she did. (I said it first, mom!)
- Dinners: good foods from Grand Central Market, the restaurant Quaint, and Diner in Brooklyn
- Breakfasts: waffles on Sunday by me, leftover coffee from wherever she could find it
- Lunches: ranged in quality from popcorn to designer chocolate
- Activities: Spa treatment at Pure, The Chocolate Show, a failed trip to my school, and a foray into Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to visit family .
So now that my Monday is done, after my weekend—that seemed exceptionally long, I might add—has come and gone, I sit here at the dining room table (that now my mother can picture so she doesn’t have to ask me questions anymore about what color it is or how many people it seats or how close to the front door it’s positioned and can I hear my neighbors through the wall if I’m sitting at it) and compose this post, mostly to say this: my mother is my motivation. I looked at her this weekend and thought, time and again, if she can go through all this cancer crap, if she can lose her hair and spend time in hospitals and lose weight down to near nothingness (and that’s no hyperbole), then I can do something for her. And while I can’t go into her body and carve out her liver and replace it with mine, or with bits and pieces of everyone’s livers who might want to donate some to her, I can build strength and gain strength in other ways. I can fight a little battle myself here in the only way I know how. So with this Monday, November 10th, I am going to start running with the intent to run a marathon. The NYC 2009 Marathon is in November and although I don’t know how I’ll get there, I think I can.
Obama and my Mama are both living proof that the “Yes We Can” mentality works. And so, again I call into use the apple, the tree, and hyperbole: if she’s got it in her, then I can’t deny it’s somewhere hibernating in me. It’s time to wake up, Little Miss Endurance; there’s a long road ahead of you. Let’s see where it takes us.
