That Might Be How It Is From Now On, Mom

A Mother. Story

“I’m so angry!” She says and pouts her lips and moves her head up and down.

The lip and head thing is something she has taken to in the past years to strike that delicate balance between victim and done wrong, but now that she is so thin and pale and slow it comes off more as a tiny reset of herself. A release of tension and / or pain while she waits to be validated.

It was a shock to first see her today. She stood up in their studio kitchen holding onto the back of a chair, drowning in a velvet leisure suit, face so gaunt it almost isn’t there, and not being helped by her not wearing her dentures, because she has lost so much weight they don’t fit her mouth anymore.

“What are you angry about?” I ask, struggling to not sound patronizing, while I braze myself for a rant about the slight of the day. As she gets worse, so does her mood. She is going down verbally swinging at everyone and -thing that moves. She might look like a flimsy lawn chair sitting next to me at the table, but her words can still be like an anvil to the face. Listening is the least I can do to make up for my guilt and shame over not wanting to be here, not wanting to go through this.

“Well, that woman was no good!” She says as if that should be sufficient for me to agree.