This is the thing about mothers.
They’re a blanket for so long. They make the best pumpkin bread and they do your hair too poofy and littlekiddish and they’re the ones you should avoid when you want to ask for something like going back outside after dinner or getting Reeses in the checkout line at the car wash. They teach you the harmonies to stuff like You Are My Sunshine and Amy Grant and they have the prettiest voices that sound like falling asleep with the window open. They’re M-O-M and that’s the only title, that’s it, so Mary or Baby or Somebody’s Ex or Daughter or Crazy seem foreign and wrong wrong wrong. You want to correct the speaker- Her name is MOM.
Then that day happens- you both give a real, genuine belly laugh at something. The same something. It’s startling and you like it but you hate it sometimes. Because you laugh more and more, and soon you’re getting Cranberry Limeades after the 8th grade play practice together everyday like best buds and she starts saying kind of bad words (like ****** and ****) that sound like she swallowed something wrong or they tasted bad (at least to you), and it reminds you of when you used to play “who can go the highest on the swingset,” and you tried to be brave but you had that feeling one day someone would accidentally go all the way over. And you keep on tripping over all these laughs that keep bumping you closer to her age and it’s like she’s coming closer to yours, too. And then some of those names people always called them start to maybe make a little more sense. Maybe they do look a little like a Mary, a little, only when they’re telling a story.
See, be careful though, because this is where things get tricky. Mary and Mom live inside the same body, and separating them out is dangerous because you’ll start to run out of room. When they go from Mrs. to Miss, for example, and their last name changes and is different from yours- you have to make sure you can still fit Miss inside that one little body. And worse, when the others start to use words like Crazy or Lost, who aren’t allowed in the same zip code much less body as names like Mom and Hunny pretty soon you’ll forget who you’re talking to and when you’re talking to Mary about your “first time” then Mom steps in the whole dynamic shifts and Daughter speaks up to say too much about Grammy’s drinking and Crazy leaves dad and stops making sense altogether with words like “new” and “change” and
“own person”.
So when they call to ask if you got the Valentines flowers, tell her they were beautiful and tell her you miss her, cause Mom sent those. And if you keep them on the line long enough and they talk about their fight with their sister or some thick, sticky gossip they overheard, it’s Mary, so respond accordingly. But they aim their fakesmilevoice at you (that’s just for the phone and church) and talk about “trying something new” or feeling like you’re the only one they can “bounce ideas off of”, clench your jaw and “mhm” and lay down so the tears don’t fall out. Cause sometimes Crazy just needs to wear herself out so that M-O-M can say she loves you, she’s so, so sorry and she misses you dearly. And that we’re gonna get through this, baby, we’re strong.
When you hang up, you’re allowed to cry some. That’s fine. Then you write a letter you don’t send (don’t dare, it’d **** her) and ask a few of them, gently, to move out.