I used to be a backpack mom. A cool mom. A twenty-something, millennial, modern, ironic mom. A like-filling, question-form-talking-but clear-minded confident mom.
I used to be a cool wife. The cool sister. An “I’m in the military but I’m still cool” kind of servicemember. An everything is whatever. An everything was whatever.
Everything was whatever watching our flour-solid relationship sift in between our fingertips. Now I juxtapose that surreal courtroom tension when my feelings edge into the territory of new sure and imminent love. And then I revert to the everyday much more rewarding love of my son because I’m a glutton for romantic deprivation.
Guilt and self-disappointment when I see him. Really see him. But at the same time pride. Not look-what-I-did pride. More look-who-he-is pride. He’s going to make someone happy, pride. He’s going to manifest my fatherless and husbandless void not for the purposes of representing myself as Queen Jocasta pride but so I could witness the possibility pride. And even if he only ever wants to hold my hand when he gets his hair cut, there’s always a mother’s guilt contrarily to push him into adulthood.
Because strep throat nights turning and tossing him into my room after which I recover from strep throat preceding Spring allergies preceding whatever other Pre-K contagion he has to offer is not a thrill. Admittedly, I drank from his cup after him but only because a real mother carries her child’s pain.
But no— I’m turning into one of those over-spiritual moms. When he gets a cold, I get a cold. When he sneezes, I sneeze in my heart. When he weeps, I weep. Through his pain, I feel phantom contractions. And I thought I was going to be a “you’re not sick” mom because, according to my mom, I’ve never been sick; I’ve never felt pain; my feelings were never valid to ever feel anger. But here I am diagnosing him dangerously close to everything. And catching his colds and crying out of my one good eye because I’m so mad I can’t do anything about it.
No antibiotic to wash with.
The hundredth thing about divorce is the fallen-flat curiosity of my mechanic and his barber and his teachers and et cetera. The unwarranted advice. The false hope. The generous fibs.
The two hundredth thing is growing sick of the unattractive depression ringing every sweat of my family’s sympathy in order to source my sanity.
So surprising for even me to comprehend that years have passed and the memory grew vague. Or perhaps allergy season has actually blinded me.
Resentment once germinating under the puffiness of my mourning eyes, I remember being a backpack mom. The archetype of a young mom. But the buckle to my backpack broke and I became a purse mom. A cheese stick in my coat pocket mom. A re-enlist because of job security mom as reality set in as my flour-firm relationship sifted in between my fingertips.