Today I was alone at costco. Or don't get me wrong, there were 50 thousand people around me in the pepperoni pizza line, everyone looking at the one small screened in window that would yield our prize and everyone looked like if one TINY thing shifted there would be a balls out fistifighting riot. I don't know why everyone wanted the same pizza as me on a friday before memorial day. Why weren't these people getting their boats out of their neighbor's yards and going up to that cement lake in Castaic and pretending it's pretty looking at yellow water with no trees and drinking bad beer and by saturday - early saturday - realizing with trembling chins that this pizza line was already the best part of their weekend.
But aside from the irate ladies next to me who were waiting for their chicken bakes and glaring at the newcomer lady with the heavy necklace who elbowed in front of them like they weren't all waiting for the SAME thing, and she is just a johnny come bust in front of us.
So I waited alone with my cart, island of the blue jules, I was wearing a gingham romper like some amish beauty contest hopeful, and I want to say in that melee with all the hungry people and the shopping people and the tense crowd like I'm waiting at Penn Station for my train home from NYU to Maryland at Christmas and everyone's cranky, I just stood there not really alone, not ever. The clouds of my children are always there with me, tugging on my hands, resting their fingers on the seam of my shirt, chattering about friends, complaining about a splinter, bouncing when they walk. I am never alone or without them. I have less people in the car it's only me if we're counting visually but when is something you see ever really someone's reality. If you were in me, once you've had kids in you and then spilled out of you cause they got too big to stay inside, so sprouting around you at grocery stores and thrift shops and county fairs and road trips and trips to the bathroom and beach days and on your back and in your lap and eating off your body and then taking driver's tests and eating on their own at drive thrus and making brownies blindfolded and making alot of noise at night laughing through their bedroom doors.
So I stood there today after my summerish morning of tending my mom at our home dementia camp, and riding my young horse and old horse, and running over to get this junk at costco, and in the waiting there amidst the pizza impatience, everyone with their group, and me single to the naked eye but crowded like regular in my own mind. They're good company. I've been used well. They're right here. We spent so much time together. My motherly tentacles snake off me like invisible pink viney octopus arms and I curl around those imaginary my people, keeping them close to me so they don't drift off, looping around them gently squeezing them so they shoot out the top and then float back over, they never wander far, and I don't have to hold tight. Watery, comforting family shield.
Mom Solo
