Like moments with my mother that make me realize she is losing it.
I sat in my bathing suit and looked at her. She looked as frazzled as ever, mumbling things under her breath and chain smoking her 305 cigarettes. "I hate these things, I miss my Camel Silvers. . ." And she'd continue with similar comments so low that they were incoherent. I was feeling just as crazy, so there was this mutual hysteria in the air between us. She was worried, I was anxious.
And it was Easter.
I pointed out a caterpillar on the stump outside the patio. Her eyes lit up like a child's.
"Oh! Those are bad, I sat on one once and it stung me," she started to hum lightly before continuing. "But that's okay, they turn into butterflies and I love butterflies." I laughed hard. One of those uncontrollable laughs that starts at the pit of your stomach and soars out past your lungs and through your throat. A bellow.
My mom giggled and continued to hum.
This was normal, this was my life.
Or today in the car with my grandmother.
"Has your mother ever apologized for leaving you?" The air escaped my lungs quickly. I looked at her, and she looked back at me innocently and curiously, like the question was something easy to bring up.
I thought really hard and recalled the instance she was asking about. I wanted to explain, wanted to rationalize the idea of what she was getting at, but I felt no need to.
"She hasn't apologized for anything," I simply replied as I pulled away from the sushi bar I had habitually been going to for almost six years.
She was silent and so was I. That's what I loved about her, once it was out in the open, it never had to be put away again.
The silence was closure, the open door slamming shut once again.
