I Got Published!

I Got Published

“Oh, guess what? I got published!” my mom exclaims waving a spray can of WD40 and setting in on the counter.

“Okay,” I prepare myself for what this might really mean. “Where, Mom?”

“Zappos! I wrote a review and they must have liked it so it’s showing at the website.”

“Well, it’s not exactly published, Mom.”

“Sure, it is,” she says. She frowns, gesturing toward her desktop computer, “look at it for yourself.” Great. I’ve managed to shift her tone from delusionally happy to fighting for her dignity. Good work.

My husband whispers in my ear, “You’re doing it again. Just let her have this.”

So, in full muster, I regulate myself. I’m lying, it hurts, but here we go. “Oh, look at that. There it is.” I pretend to read it, but the war between my exacting-self and my better angel are taking up too much cognitive space for me to absorb my mom’s opinion of the Naturalizer flats. “Well written, Mom.”

She smiles. Vindicated.

My husband sighs in relief.

And I feel stormy.

“What are we doing today?” my mom asks for the fourth time since we walked in the door fifteen minutes ago. “I forget.”

I help her to a chair. “You wanted us to take you to the mall,” I reiterate as patiently as I know how and help her with her shoes.

She’s suddenly quiet and her feet have stopped fidgeting indicating that all auxiliary functions have ceased while her fuzzy mind whirrs.

I look up and she’s shaking her head.

“What, Mom? You don’t want to go to them mall anymore?”

The thing she’d hammered home all week is how we never have fun when I visit. It’s true that I’m always enlisted in some chore. I try to combat this syndrome by asking in advance of my visit if there is anything I can get done ahead of time so we can enjoy our time. But alas, lately she always ordered a random piece of furniture for me to build—garage shelves, floor cabinets, nightstands—and squish into her overcrowded house. She’s obsessed with drawer units. Some drawers are so shallow you can’t even store socks. She fills them with paper. And then they fill with silverfish.

Today there was an official notice that her driver’s license had been suspended. It listed all the necessary steps to regain her driving privileges within 45 days. It was dated a month ago.

“Oh, they told me I had to go through all this because I rear ended a Harbor Police vehicle,” she tells me. “If I’d rear-ended anyone else it would have been okay!”

It looks like scheduling doctor and DMV appointments is also on the schedule today. All so she could win back the wheel. A battle I’m sure she’ll lose, but in seeming solidarity I’ll schedule these five appointments. I can already imagine the devastating heartbreak she’ll suffer when she fails her driving test. Brought down like prey at the DMV—no survival for the unfit.

“Why would I want to go to the mall? I go there all the time!” my mom asks, incredulous.

I know the answer to my next question, I gulp, and ask anyway. “How did you get there? Did you drive?”

“Well, I didn’t walk! Although I could have.”

So many things I want to correct in her answer. Not only should she not be driving, she could not walk thirty miles. Fortunately, my new filter only allows me to say “No Chico’s or J Jill today?” I ask, testing if this sudden shift is permanent or fleeting.

“No!” she’s adamant, fierce almost. I realize it would be like stuffing a vet-bound cat into a carrier.

My husband sighs again, wanders outside to make his escape. He fears I won’t be able to contain myself. I know she’s no longer my rational mom, but my body forgets. A reflex of sixty years. My fault for not adapting, my fault for not being practiced at the compassionate methods of redirection. I keep beating at the truth, hoping it will bring her to see me. Her kid, not her caregiver. We were partners. Now I have the reigns, but she’s in charge. How am I prepared for this powerful yet powerless role?

“I want to get out! Into the world! See something!” she pleads.

“You want to have lunch and then drive out to the lighthouse?” I say, as if pacifying a kitten. “If we get there late this afternoon maybe we can catch a glimpse of the Artemis II.”

“Oh, forget it. I’ll just buy a plane ticket and go to Chicago.” She bolts upright and strides unsteadily toward the front door. “I’m driving to the airport and buying a ticket.” She grabs her keys, hand on the doorknob.

Shit. I have to stop her, right?

She has gotten worse. My sister and I thought she could live on her own if she wanted, like a feral cat. That’s what she’d wanted. One tumble down the stairs, a fall off a ladder or a slip of a slipper and, crawling, she would quietly curl up under the bed to end her journey.

I run to stop her and block the door, but she still tries for the door. I try to restrain her arms, and she struggles with her spindly frame. She sneers, frees an arm and hits me. I swear her teeth gnash and I keep my head back out of range as I try to hold her. Eventually, her body forces her to give up the battle, and staggering back the couch, she flops akimbo, glaring at me. If she were a dragon her nostrils would be smoking and the walls singed.

Seems like a great time for some tough love.

“Mom. Listen,” I begin, “you can’t drive your car right now. If you get in an accident your insurance will not protect you. You could lose your house and all the money you’ve saved for ninety-five years. Do you understand that? Are you willing to risk that?”

She blinks; her eyes grow teary. For a moment she stands at the precipice of the truth. I penetrated. The pain of it landed. Thank God. Let’s face this hard thing together.

But my mark evaporates within seconds. She lunges at me, attempting another round, only to fall back onto the sofa. I fully know it’s her brain misfiring, bad chemicals, a slip of a cog—not my mom. Nothing will stop her from trying to recapture her life. Not even love, and I’m not sure she feels that anymore in an abiding way.

Quickly her frustration sparks into screams and sobs. She pounds the couch with her boney fists.

“What’s going on?” My husband rushes in.

“Nothing really,” I say, in a complicated daze. “We got off on the driver’s license thing . . .and I guess it’s pretty much my fault she rear-ended the cops.”

To him, I probably look like a cold, heartless hag who abuses her mother. But when her screaming stops and her vitriol comes spits out like hellfire, he understands my predicament.

Like a demon, she grips the couch arm pull herself forward and in a guttural voice, not like her own, she spews, “You all are goddamned cowards! Afraid of letting an old lady like me be free. Cutting my wings. I want to fly, fly, fly!”

Maybe to protect myself, my consciousness floats up and away. From here, I observe the room as a stage and this is all a scripted, big-swing comedy sketch. Comedy comes from extremis, right? Find the humor, find the light. This is life, unfun and hilarious. Go with that, go there. Redirect yourself.

“Alright, Sarah Bernardt!” I shout, slow and deliberate, to rise above her soliloquy.

Mom halts. Stares at me until her eyes sink into recognition. She smiles. “That’s you!”

I nod. My eyes filling with mist. I nod again.

“We used to call you that,” she says with wonder, as if I’m an old family photograph.

I kneel down and take her hands. “Yeah, Mom. You guys called me that all the time.”

“You had tantrums! You were such a hot head.” She giggles to herself and then notices my husband standing there. “We used to call her sweat head.” She giggles again. “Because her head was always so hot!” She tries to slap her knee with a pat that only grazes.

My husband laughs.

And she feels she’s once again charmed a man with her sparkling conversation.

Even though I’m the brunt of it all, I’ll take it. I don’t love that self-deprecations is the only path I’ve found, but it entertains and distracts. Everybody seems to love it.

I realize my husband hasn’t stopped laughing.

I give him a look that asks, “what”?

“You do have a hot head.” Now he’s bending over, the laughs are spasmodic, soundless and deep.

“I do not!” I holler.

Now I’ve got‘em. They are both rolling in the aisles. I can keep this going for a minute. Purge the ugly out with hysterical tears. I bellow even louder, “Oh what do you two passionless gumballs know about anger! I struggle in this life every day to do the right thing and where does it get me? ANGRY!”

I should probably stop now. My mom is laughing so hard I’m afraid her heart will give out.

I stop my fake, but not really fake, rant.

Their collective breathing slows back to normal. Trickles of residual laughter erupt as they also ebb. They are renewed. I’m spent.

“But where is my renewal?” I say to myself. “You selfish prig. Be satisfied!”

Noting my condition, my kind husband takes over and asks my mom, “so what were you doing with this can of WD40? Something need fixing?”

“Well, if it did, I probably already fixed it,” my mom assures him. “Oh! I remember I was holding on to it to remind myself to tell you I got published!”

No, no, no. Don’t let the cycle begin. But here it goes.

My husband asks carefully, “Where?”

“At WD40,” she says like he must be daft.

“Oh right.” My husband looks at me, we share a shrug and he ventures over to her computer. Discovering another tab up on her screen behind the Zappos page he clicks on a WD40 fan page. And there it is. He reads:

“I’ve learned of another use for WD40! It turns out fisherman love to spray it on their flies!

Margeret Conover, San Diego”

He looks over to me eyebrows raised then looks down at his pants zipper. We burst into howls of laughter and I relish the hilarity—savor the tears rolling down my cheeks.

Mom is trying to laugh with us, but is perplexed. “It’s true! I heard it directly from a fisherman.”

And, of course, we only laugh harder while she watches a little confused, but pleased that something new is happening, something fun and that somehow she made it happen.