2005-05-18 || 10:13 p.m.

|| ladies who linner. ||

i called me mum tonight to see how she's doing. my dad is on a field trip at a military base in virginia learning the latest lifesaving tactics of the coast guard auxiliary (if you know my dad, you understand it's all for the uniform. he wears it around the house, complete with officer-and-a-gentleman cap, saluting himself in the mirror and warning the dog not to jump up on him in his finery. this is where i get my love for dress-up, for reals.) and she is home alone, winding about her mom circles: eating her bacon breakfast with the dog (a daily ritual. she puts away the bacon and inexplicably criminally remains rather svelte, a trait sadly not carried over in the intricate process of relaying her DNA down to her darling daughter.), watching her fancy senseo coffee pot vibrate on the counter while it delivers "the perfect cup of coffee," gardening in the back yard, watching more extended takes from the lord of the rings trilogy, driving the quarter mile to the elementary school where she volunteers twice a week, lying on the couch to catch her eleven favorite home and garden shows. she said she got tired today, so she stopped. she said her boob hurt. she said she was expecting to hear from the doctor about the biopsy but didn't and she's sure it's nothing and you know kathy mitchell has breast cancer? that they caught it without it even showing up as a ghosty white mass on the x-ray, and the chemo is so specialized she was able to go to baja the next day?
when i was home for the weekend she talked about the biopsy in grave detail, how they prodded at her boob in seven different places. then she pulled her shirt down to show me the bandage and dad winced. she waved it off and i took a drink from my coffee and filled in another word in my crossword puzzle, all of us seated at the table in the backyard, and i somehow didn't give it another thought. but the pauses and reassurances on the phone today, imagining her alone in the house sitting in dad's chair with her legs tucked under her like a fourteen-year-old, made it scary enough to not mind that she has repeated herself four times about what bookshelves i should buy when i get to portland and how i really should consider buying several bath mats and sewing them together as a living room rug because they did that on one of the design shows and it really was fabulous.

this weekend i got to know my mother so much better. we went out for lunch and dinner and lunch again. we sat on the porch of the tea house in san juan capistrano on saturday. i wore her sweater and she told me about growing up in chicago with all those brothers and sisters and how mean grandma was and leaving it all at age 23, never looking back. how her being the sole b-name in a family of j's really was indicative of her place in that house. for the first time in my entire life i got her: why she likes getting angry so much and why she is so dismissive of her family. why she mutters under her breath when vacuuming on saturdays and why she is such a solitary lady. we walked through antique shops and i linked arms with her. she is so much smaller than me, kind of frail. we went into chico's and she kept pointing out outfits that were so golden girls i couldn't stand it (are you aware there is middle-aged lady fashion? expressly catered to the over fifty and fabulous?). she bought a denim jacket with palm trees on it and i made fun of her all the way home, my mother driving her tiny silver car with her towering daughter in the passenger seat, grabbing at the handle in the door when she braked too hard or swerved erratically in just the way she used to when i first started learning how to drive.
for dinner we went to a sushi place in the mother of neon soccer-mom south orange county shopping centers. my mother has had sushi once under the strict supervision of my worldly sister. my mother doesn't know how to use chopsticks. we sat in a booth facing the sushi chefs and i had to show her, in the exact way my dad taught me when i was 10, and the sushi chefs laughed out loud and told her they could fetch a fork from the food court down the way if she needed it. but she wa a trooper and pretended to drop the chopsticks on the ground so that she could eat maki with her hands.
on monday on the way to the airport she commended me for not crying all weekend. i told her i was choked up the whole time but could keep it under control, that i feel like we have gotten a lot closer and get along much better than ever. that i now get upset about dad, that he seems sad or lost since retiring and we hardly talk. he watches tv or washes the car or takes lucy for a walk. my mother complained about his not cleaning up, how he's not social, how he should know how to do things after thirty-two years of marriage. he's a good man and doesn't drink and isn't violent and has never fooled around, but but but. and i gave my mother relationship advice.
she countered with a safe sex lecture but i squashed it.
we got to the airport and she kissed me on the lips in that mummy way and i told her to not forget to pick up her pills from the pharmacy and she told me she loved me. and she pulled away, driving with both hands on the wheel and her chin jutting out like a granny, and i sat on a bench and cried and cried.

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