For the next week I either layed in bed or ran around visiting family depending upon whether or not I could use my mom’s car. I missed a couple of voiceover auditions and didn’t get to see everyone. I’d also almost forgotten that it was my birthday, but my cousin Leanne reminded me when I invited her to lunch on my birthday.
With my timing off amidst the socializing, I somewhat neglected my mom who stressed out about whether or not she could afford the money or time on a road trip to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I didn’t help her nerves any by providing only uncertainty in regards of where to dine for my celebration. Though I’d been certain for a couple of days, I don’t think the entire party quite possessed any clarity until that morning. We got started a little late towards my old home town, and filled with some guilt about running late, I suppose, my mom felt she needed to tell me that she would have bought me a cake had things had gone appropriately.
I’m sure that going wrong didn’t help her mood, but I’d had it with the pouting over the vacation, the regrets tied up in what she WOULD have done with me if we weren’t going on vacation, what she WOULD have given me for my birthday if we weren’t going on vacation, and so on. In a fleeting moment, I snapped. I very sternly raised my voice at her with the remark, “Please. Stop telling me what you were GOING to do for me. I keep telling you we don’t HAVE to go on vacation. We don’t have flights. We don’t have hotels. We can choose not to go. I don’t want to do it if you don’t want to. I keep telling you it’s no big deal.†And it really was no big deal and I said nothing more. Being reprimanded really cheered her up, though!
The mood enhancers kept on coming when we got a little dose of being the only ones there for fifteen minutes. I kept thinking, “she’s going to kill me for talking her out of the cake.†I actually didn’t talk her out of anything, but I did mention we’d be late if we got one. Thankfully, my Aunt Nancy came with a most delicious multi-chocolate cake so I got some relief on that one. All in all, lunch with the ladies was rather pleasant although my cousin needed to leave so the pressure of an incredibly slow wait staff did ever-so-slightly burdened everyone’s minds. My mother also withdrew into herself with hurt feelings mostly from an undeserving disappointment in herself. Her sisters, naturally, took this with a grain of salt.
Later in the day, my friend Jen drove me to the Mart for a massage. The Mart is a flea market with a warehouse. Ahhhh. Relaxing. But where else do you get an on demand, legal massage late on a Friday night? She recommended the Chinese man who is also, apparently, a certified physician of some sort with a background in acupressure and maybe even acupuncture. She told me I was to leave my clothes on. Yikes. I would’ve taken my clothes off had I known he was going to put his hands under my shirt and nearly tear the neck up. I love a good massage and I especially love them cheap, but this guy was too aggressive. I don’t mean strong, but aggressive. He kept sticking his fingers in my ears, roughly, and tickled me in places that were a little too close for comfort if you know what I mean. What made matters grosser than gross was the fact he didn’t use massage oils and his hands were soooooo sweaty. Yuuvvvugh.
Then we did a little more shopping. I got wine and beer for the road trip. We went back to her house for a drink, grabbed her husband, and went to my mom’s to try to fix a few things up for her. She and her husband, both plumbers in the airforce, attempted to figure out what her 20 year old ceiling drip was and we all attempted to deal with the motion sensor on her brand new back porch. We failed. It was absolutely freezing out in the yard. Below, I believe, as we were in a cold spell.
In the morning, I woke to a mom with new optimism about a vacation. She’d been on the phone with her sisters who cheered her on so I left to pick up the car. My mom, a graveyard shift worker who lives completely in opposition to the majority of the country, had already been drinking and therefore lagging quite behind in getting herself ready. I decided to start packing the car while I waited a bit impatiently, mainly thinking about how we were holding my father and his girlfriend up. When I was a teen, my father had a rigid compulsion with promptness and if you’ve ever inconvienced my dad, you know the pressure I was under.
Now, I promise you, we did not take any tools to anything in the house. We only did inspections. However, when I returned to leave for the Outher Banks, my mom’s newly repaired sink exploded with water and covered the kitchen floor. The beer now went down with the misery of her bubble bursting. I watched her stomp around the house a while and began to pack thinking, “we really need to get out of here†while also thinking, I don’t need my dad to see her like this.
While coming back from the car for another round of packing, my mom stood at the the pretty door of her newly built porch slamming it repeatedly in attempt to get it locked. I stood from the yard watching her quietly. Finally, I asked, “What are you doing?†and approached her. I slowly shut and locked the door. She then remarked, “I alreadly locked the back of the house.†I gently replied, “It’s ok. I can lock it again.†She continued infusing hostility into her every step until finally, I broke. This was no momentary snap of stern words. No. This was a vehement eruption of repression like that of Ralphy whomping on that bully.
