I Crashed Guy's Night...

On Writing, Fishing, Dating & The End of Single Mom's Week Off, BAM BAM!

photo for show only, not loaded and I do not love, own or use guns.

I’m sitting in my parent’s living room in Vermont having black coffee. My dad comes in in his bathrobe. We get to talking about writing. He says there’s a lot he can teach me. I say, please do. I always say, please do. He is a writer. A literary legend. (He named his pet cat Homer for god’s sake and not after Homer Simpson.) He goes into his study and comes back with a wire basket with a wooden handle. In it is filled with art museum postcards and on the backs he has scrawled with paper mate flair felt tip pen (the only pen I’ve ever seen him use/ how good is it to be a writer with a signature pen brand?) words. So many words, phrases, his prompts.

It interests me that he is inspired by words and phrases.

“Language,” he nods.

While I am inspired by emotional concepts. Chunks I then break down to demystify. But I write essays and he writes poems. It gets me to thinking if we are both just trying to take our power back with words. Me, to reclaim my emotion which can otherwise be so intense as to want to control me, the artist’s curse or intuitive razor’s edge. He, slinging words to correct who have wronged him, boundaries, swords.

I tell my dad I have just written a piece on motherhood. I have yet to share it with my parents. I know what happened to me makes my mother sad. It would make me feel helpless too to watch my daughter suffer. But I didn’t write this piece for pity. I wrote it for power.

I take a sip of coffee and I am reading the comments that have come in, and I am really feeling the support. There is one comment that is haunting me though. It says over being a good mother, I am a strong mother, and those lead the best examples. I hadn’t thought about that.

It is too obvious to want to be a good mother. A strong mother I am proud to say I have earned. That’s a hill I will die on.

My mom comes down. She puts her hearing aids in. She slept really well last night because she super pulled down the shades. She even rolled a towel and placed it up against the bedroom door.

“To smoke weed?” I ask. This slips by her. My dad cracks a smile. She does not smoke weed.

“It was so dark,” she says happily.

Because of her poor hearing it’s the light that keeps her awake. Her vision is her alertness. It’s our hearing, for me and my father.

I tell them I’m going to head back to Boston. I have a date. My mom wants to ask many questions but I tell her it’s still early and I need to play it cool.

My whole family is very protective of me. My brother claims he is the eldest sibling. I’m two and a half years older.

“Why,” my mother asks.

“To course correct me.” I say.

He has a landline in his basement he once used to call me to talk some sense into me. I am spontaneous and at times impulsive but I will say- I hear my family when they try to get through to me.

Later on my date we will chat over calamari about how different everyone’s realties are.

“I think everyone has a different mission.” I say, as we walk into the movie theatre but we don’t get to finish that thought. He buys me sour patch kids and I still have them in my purse.

I had come up to Vermont for the 4th of July. I spent the day with my brother and his friends. I had crashed their guys night. Not without permission.

I showed up with four bags of groceries, the bottle of cucumber jalepeno tequila we like, and a dragon fruit for his kitchen counter. (I always like to bring up one weird food item to test out.)

Before his other guests show up we go on a short e-bike stint up the hill. We come back into the kitchen and I step on a shard of glass and it jabs me in the heel. He gets me a pair of tic removing tweezers and I’m sitting in the corner trying to pick out the shard, when three boys walk in. One with a bunch of beer, packs of tortellini ,and his bags filled with guns for the shooting range they’re gonna visit.

“Hey,” my brother says to them, “this might be a good time to announce theres’ glass on the floor. I broke a bowl. My sister just stepped in it.”

LORDY.

I set the table. We eat family dinner style the five of us, salad, garlic bread, venison my brother had hunted, fried fish he caught, we top it off with pomegranet seeds and chocolate. We play pool. I win because my brother scratches. His pool name is hot pockets someone decides. I chime in, “Mine is scratch.”

The next day I go antiqueing with my mother. I decide she needs a fun trip out. My dad is getting better, but he has been sick, and she’s been caretaking. We peruse the cute puppy teapots and butterfly teacups for my daughter who loves tea parties. My mother always gives her grandchild water in a “pretty cup.” Even her cats drink out of vintage china. I find a dope 1960’s double breasted blue tweed wool coat with silk lining. Before I became a mom I had a brick and mortar vintage clothing shop in Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA. Oona’s. I love a good vintage coat. I do usually score them in the dead of summer too now that I think about it. The clothes at antique stores are often fire. They give me 15% off.

I swing by my brother’s for lunch.

“Want to hold a gun?” my brother’s friend says. I’m timid. But it’s not loaded. I take a very outrageous pic. To be clear I am not a proponant of guns. It’s a his friend thing. My brother hunts with a bow and arrow.

We go fishing in two canoes. Some drunkies in motor boats zip past us and fuck up our boat launch with their wake. The tip of the canoe dips under a wave. I get soaked. That night we have a camp fire. Cold call for owls. Light sparklers.

And in the morning I am gone.

I’m sitting now in the ninety degree heat on my back porch, writing. The chicken are boppin’ around the back yard. My dog comes and goes doing his little doggy thing. Soon I will go inside and make my way to my best friend’s birthday party picnic. And in the morning I will pick up my daughter from her ten day vacation with her dad.

I did it!

I’m proud of the way I have sent my time in her absence. Sure, I felt adrift at moments, but I also let the universe guide me and I had a hell of a good time. Did some things that really made me tune into the feeling of being, well alive.

The time dragged and then honestly it has flown. I am so ready to pick up my daughter tomorrow, spend the day with her, and get back to life, just us.