My days of being a 24 hour waiter are drawing to a close. It's been 25 years of 24 hours on call emotional physical spiritual well being coach with the kind of attention you can't pay for on the most expensive airline first class, not even on the double decker ones they had in the 70s when the stewardesses dressed like they should in short skirts and tall boots with real silverware. We remember how it felt when things really mattered when airlinepeople used all the money for the glamour of the customer not these shitty vegan pretzels that taste like the dust of Egyptian coffins and the stewardesses are all guys like the spokesmodels now on Let's Make a Deal. Sometimes it's not better to give everyone a chance. Better for them maybe, cool for equality, but aren't women still getting paid less
I realized it yesterday when we went to the beach with one of Bess's two new roommates and the girl made a noise with her nose a few times and I thought you're going to be hearing that for the next year in close quarters that noise is going to be all you remember when you're my age looking back
I realized seeing these girls in the ocean that Bess is taking the leap, this beautiful daring quiet shark with a bent sense of humor and delicate hands, face in all the angles I love, this difficult tumultuous teen is the flag at the end of my motherhood race and I started on this gleaming sliver chrome bike and I'm skidding through at the end on a beaten up broken Big Wheel that hurts my ass and doesn't really even roll anymore
This means we were there, fellas. We used it til it broke
Also when you see a carbon copy of your kid or what's supposed to look like your kid in age and rank and will be in the same room with your kid and they have no vibrant Bessness, this new girl is the AI version, it all functions and it's not annoying except for that nose thing but when you lift up the sheet and look under there's just a bunch of wires
where if you even just look at my daughter sitting there minutes ago in her car seat on the way to the zoo with ponytails and a glorious shrieking laugh you might have to wear sunglasses because she shines like the top of the chrysler building
it's the hard knock life
for moms
All the other moms we started preschool with, let's see, one got new boobs and a divorce, one died, one moved to where it rains, one moved to where it never rains, one had open heart surgery when really all she needed was her kids to be nicer to her
Then there's me still mothering
mothering til the last second
Sure I'm not that good at it anymore I don't cook barely the dogs have ear infections I shifted over to dementia care (as seems to be the river of care movement at this age) and I filled my backyard with horses. I see that maybe I should be done with all care so my body can rest. My gramma at this age was flying in a tiny airplane with my grandpa and they traveled the country in an airstream and in Ireland she wore bulky wool lady suits and her hair in a bun according to the curling snapshots
that was back when they had stewardesses waving you friendlyish toward the next phase. My gramma never looked back she said goodbye to her children to marriage, gave them something borrowed, something blue and then boarded her airstream and got really good at playing bridge
the kids were on their own and she only had her surly husband to bend over and cook 3 meals a day for til he lost his marbles and eventually died. Then she cut her hair off, lived 6 glorious months as a free person, moved back to her childhood town and promptly signaled her finale with a fine stroke and died 3 days later easily, amongst music with my mom singing and with me and my two little kids sliding down her carpeted stairs on sleeping bags. She came from a big family and she died in a family she made
she let all her cards fall away
So is Bess leaving an ending or just a drive up the coast where she can live next to the lulling ocean and be free to live like a luxurious queen gathering herself and her memories for her future lifetime
Is it worth it to be the mom, eaten off of, carrying all the cups from the car, screaming where are your shoes 5 minutes before you have to be somewhere 20 minutes away
would I trade even a second of this deeply messy gritty meat grinded body life
I have fallen down on the hot tarmac during the last lap and I reach forward with all my might to push the tag team last member toward the last leg just a nudge she's almost there
she doesn't come back to pick me up she only holds up her water like did you fill this up then she lilts forward lumbering like a baby polar bear and sheds her skin to reveal a lengthy supermodel and we won the race
this is how it looks moms
