Parental Units

I saw him across the miles of shoes that make up DSW at the Mall of America. An overweight bearded guy holding his wife's purse, baseball cap on his head. I blinked, so sure, so sure for that instant that it was him. Then I blinked again and he was just some guy I'd never seen before. I kept blinking until the tears went away.

She's laid up right now. She had surgery on an old ankle injury and she's on bed rest until the end of November. I send her silly postcards and punny Halloween cards, but when I talk to her on the phone she seems so sad. I am stumped.

I heard "Lay Lady Lay" on the radio tonight. I turned it up as loud as I could, screaming along the words while laughing and crying simultaneously. He used to try and claim that song was about a dog. A dog! As if.

She was so angry that night. She broke every single one of the plates and bowls by hurling them off the balcony. He wouldn't buy her new sheets for the bed, well then, he was going to buy her something worth even more.

He let me take the truck to school, but realized he needed it for moving something later that afternoon. He went to the school, took the truck, parked the car in exactly the same way I had left the truck (meaning he had to back it in) and left the keys in the ignition with a note "took the truck - drive this home - Pops" sitting on the dash. I laughed and laughed and laughed at the instruction. What else was I going to drive home?

She let me curl up into the bed next to her while she slept. I read book after book after book. She'd wake up, look at the pile of books, and ask me which ones I would recommend for her. I would tell her to read all of them, wanting to hear if she agreed with me on the merits (or demerits) of each one.

My uncles crowded around him and they asked him what they thought of the boy his youngest was to marry. He shrugged. "Sink or swim. You gotta let them make their own decisions." Dr. BB listened and wondered. Was that a yae or nae vote?

She finally got to drive the car on that road trip out west as he napped in the back. We were in the Rockies somewhere and the sign told us that there wasn't another gas station for a gazillion miles. Maybe we should stop for gas, I suggested. She looked down at the needle at the orange half hash, looked back at him sleeping, and said we'd be fine. As we coasted down that last mountain, running on fumes and dreams, him harrumphing in the back, me biting my nails to the quick, my mother opened the window and screamed into the cool air.