#those derby cars were a pain in the ass to animate

[tihemme]

The Summer My Brilliant Mother Blew Her Own Mind - Part 1

August whatever, the last batch of students graduated Friday, and I’m broke. I’ve hunkered down for a two-week forced vacation, throughout which I intend to stave off next year’s inevitable financial crisis by drafting yet another television series proposal - but then my mother calls. “What the hell is going on?” And now I’m pissed at my brother. I told him yesterday over the phone that I’d had tests, and had failed them, that I needed to redraft my will. Would he be my executor? And no, I wasn’t sure how sick, I wouldn’t know for a few months, and no, I wasn’t planning on dying anytime soon, but as is, my ex-fiance from before my ex-husband would inherit everything, including an old set of vinyl I gave up in my 30s, and a poster collection I left in storage fourteen moves ago. And maybe my youngest daughter, God help him. “Don’t tell Mum or Dad.” “I won’t. But you should.” “I will.” “It’ll be worse if you don’t.” “I know.” “So, when?” “When there’s something to tell, T; I don’t want to worry them.” “I’m going to kill him.” “Kill who?” “T. I told him not to worry you.” “About what?”

Dammit!  This is my mother. She always does this. 

“T didn’t say anything?” “I haven’t talked to your brother in weeks.” Of course she hasn’t. “So, spill it. What’s wrong?”

Trapped, I tell her. Struggling to keep my shit together, I pace, voice wavering, confused dog at my heels, getting underfoot. I tell her all about it, and how I need her not to worry. And of course, I’m terrified, and she’s not an idiot. Hearing my mother’s voice, I fall to fucking pieces, and she takes over. As she rationalizes about cysts and lumps and all this progress that’s been made in the field of breast cancer research, I bite hard into my knuckles to stifle violent, body-wracking sobs.

“This is ridiculous. You need to be here,” she says. “You need to take a break, and be here.”

I have no one else. This bothers her.  My best friends are all colleagues. I doubt I register in the top 20 of any of their friends lists, but this is of no concern to any of us. I love them anyway. To keep things simple, I call them my “best-friend/colleagues.” The slash here acts as a kind of connective tissue; it connects the two concepts for me, while creating a safe barrier for them - like a tissue blocking snot. With it, they can keep calling me “colleague” while I call them “best friends,” and we each know who we’re talking about in the relative safety of our social-slash-work environment. 

I can shoot the shit with the best of them (which is all of them) about anything, but this. I can’t tell any of them about this. 

One of my best-friend/colleagues lost his wife two years ago, and cannot escape the vortex of grief. I worry for him every day, especially on the anniversary of her passing, which he marks monthly. I did the same when I lost my first true love at 20, followed weeks later by our premature stillborn baby. Twenty-six years on, I still feel that ache, so I think maybe I almost understand. He gets so sad so easily, and I’m honoured he trusts us so openly with his pain, but it’s also worrisome. Sometimes I wonder how he grieves at home, and it’s an unbearable thought. If this best friend found out his colleague was sick with the same thing that robbed him of his wife, I think he might be triggered. I suspect he’d need to insulate, and isolate, and so keep his distance, and that’s also unbearable to imagine. 

Also, the one time I offered to do something with him socially - I think it was to see a film - he delicately suggested I look into dating apps. So no, I will not be telling him. 

My absolute best-best-friend/colleague doesn’t exactly know he’s my best-best friend, but I don’t mind. He’s always appreciated my weird sense of humour, and doesn’t seem bothered when we happen to be scheduled to work on the same days. When we get the chance, we talk, a lot - well, I do, and he responds - but there’s an awful lot I don’t tell him. Like how he’s the only non-relative I’m leaving anything to in my redrafted will. Or how much I look forward to seeing him each week, and that when I don’t, it occurs to me to miss him. But because I’m still not convinced he hasn’t added me to his Restricted list on Facebook, I worry that if he did know either of these things, he’d shut me down completely, and without saying a word. Like, colleague/friendly ghost me. Or recommend I check out dating apps, too. 

So no damn way am I telling him about my boob. 

My female best-friend/colleagues are all my age or slightly older, and each of us is going through our own shit right now. I could tell them, I guess, but I don’t. You see, this mid-life gynoshittery is a contest none of us wants to participate in, let alone win. Don’t get me wrong, menopause and endometriosis and the national average pay gap are all over the staff room table when it’s all women present, but not breasts.

If you knew less about me, perhaps you’d suggest I should have more friends, like maybe outside work. 

I’ve tried. 

I used to ref roller derby. So long as you’re concussion-and-fracture free, a tighter community is hard to find. Before that, I was in the army. Those relationships ended not much differently than derby’s did, if far more violently.

In the intervening years, I had a husband. He didn’t approve of many of my friends, unless they were our friends - by which I mean, his friends - due to his belief that regardless of the age, marital status or gender of any of my own, I had to be sleeping with them. So, to save us all the embarrassment of his persistent public confrontations on the matter, I opted out of having any friends. For twenty years.

So anyway, yeah - my colleague/friends really are all I have. 

There is no one else.

Mum’s text reads, “You’br stil craming out, right?” I’ve been thinking about it, for sure, and I miss her, but I’m not sure I can justify it. I have a massive application deadline for the end of the month. Plus, these next two weeks off aren’t exactly voluntary. I’m not getting paid, and money’s tighter than it’s been in a couple of years. And she’s in bloody Saskatchewan. 

“There’r b rst beef anf Yorkshire pddinh.” 

Okay, just to be clear, no one makes gluten free Yorkshire pudding quite like my stepfather does. Think bannock in a gravy bowl. And I can tell, this last push is from him.

“Oh, well, okay then - I’ll be there Wednesday,” I joke back, still not committed. It’s Sunday morning. “Ok, we br reedy.”

My mother is a PhD. She taught upper-level anthropology courses for twenty years. So she takes proofreading very, very seriously, even with texts. But since her house almost completely burned down this past March, I’ve noticed she’s been letting things slide. And I mean, a lot.

I turn to my youngest, who’s bitched all summer about us not camping, not really taking a holiday, no promised one-on-one time without siblings and bickering. 

“Wanna go see Nan?” “What-? When?” “If we pack now, we can leave first thing. Camp a couple of nights on the way, and get there for Wednesday.” 

It’s fire season - the worst one yet - and I’m still not feeling well, so I clarify that by “camp,” I mean “sleep in the van and eat take out along the way.” My daughter’s kind of camping, but this isn’t exactly fair notice. 

“There’ll be Yorkshire pudding.”

Enough said. We start packing in the late afternoon, and I’m in the middle of drawing up a list of documents I’ll need to pull out of my ass the second I get back to hit that deadline, plus a list of groceries to cut costs for meals for the trip, when I stop suddenly, hit by a strange wave of anxiety. I look at my daughter. 

“Hey. Wanna leave tonight?”

Now I’m freaking myself out. My perfectly rational fear of animals darting out onto highways after dark means I have never, ever left for a multi-day drive any later than noon on the first day. So I don’t understand it. But I don’t want to argue with it. I need to leave now, and for once, my daughter shares my sense of urgency. 

We’re on the road within the hour, listing off all the shit we’ll need to grab along the way, calling the bank to add up the balances - we seriously can’t afford this right now, it’s ridiculous - realizing this is a mistake, and knowing, somehow, that it’s not. 

By the time we hit Merritt, the sun’s down. We pit stop at a gas station in Kamloops, and run into a motorcyclist who’s run into a deer. I text my best-best friend to tell him. His ex rides a bike, and sideswiped a moose last week - only she wasn’t on her bike at the time, but in a compact car that is now slightly more compact, but thankfully not bent in half like this biker was, or his bike. 

As soon as I hit Send, I wonder vaguely if my random texts outside work might annoy my bbf/c, and vow to not bother him anymore.

Pulling into Salmon Arm, we see the aftermath of another fresh kill. Whatever it is is large and hairy, and splayed out in the road in many more pieces than nature intended. It’s 11 PM, and I decide to stop for the night at nearby Yard Creek. The kid and I look up through the cracked windscreen at stars we haven’t seen since last year, and zzzzfoooph, spot a meteor. Briefly entertained, we crawl into the back of the motorized tent, and are asleep within moments. 

I wake at 6:30 to the lilt of morning birdsong, and a familiar dull throbbing pain deep in my left breast. 

The kid wants to sleep in, but I’m getting restless, so fire up the old Dutch oven. She chases me all the way from the van to the outhouse. Now both wide awake, we pee, brush our teeth, and go.

We stop for breakfast at Denny’s in Revelstoke, almost too tired to care about cross-contamination. My daughter orders her usual, and our waitress - trying to be helpful - recommends something from the 55+ menu for me. 

Do I really look so much older than I feel? 

My daughter assures me the waitress is just saving us money. Build-your-own breakfasts add up fast, and this way, it’s half the price. Fine. Whatever. I pick at my stingy eggs and bacon with wheat-free toast, and call Mum to tell her where we are. 

“What’s your ETA, then?” I have no idea. “8:30,” I say. “Will you push through, or camp again?” I just said... “Push through,” I answer. “Call me when you get to the junction at Maple Creek,” she says, “so Grrpa can put the pizza on.”

Grrpa is my stepdad. 

We’re on the road again by 7:45, but it feels later. Golden, Banff, Calgary for a pee break and to gas up. Naturally, there’s a BC fruit stand in the parking lot.  “Text Nan and tell her 7:30.” Brooks, Medicine Hat, the last exit to Drumheller, the needle locked on 130 all the way. I’ve been highway driving for almost ever, and rarely exceed 120.  “Text Nan and tell her 6:30.” We enter Saskatchewan, and I realize that even with the time change, we’ll be there by 5:30 at the latest.

Mum waits until the exact moment we blast through the Maple Creek junction to pull her next magic trick. 

“Text Nan and tell her -” The phone rings. 

“Where are you now?” “Jesus, Mother, are you fucking psychic?” 

It’s complete rhetoric. I expect her to say, “Well, we did just put the pizza on,” or “So, while you’re in Maple Creek,” or “Welcome to Saskatchewan; what’d you do, FLY?”

Except -  “… What?” 

She doesn’t get it. 

“Where are you?”

My daughter and I share a look. Something’s wrong. 

“We’re blas - just driving past Maple Creek now. We’ll be there in 30 minutes.”

“Oh. Okay. I’ll tell Denis. We’re having pizza. Is that okay?” Denis is my stepdad, but I don’t call him that. I’ve never called him that. He’s Grrpa, even to me. 

“Okay.”

Something’s really wrong.

“See you soon.” She hangs up, and my daughter and I don’t say a word as I edge over 140. I can’t say what it is, but it’s urgent, and horrid and heavy and late. For what, I don’t know. But it’s all I can think. We’re late, we’re so late. We’re too late. 

We’re too late.