Absorbing the Blows
Tiptoeing around others’ feelings often means sacrificing my own
“Mom, you’re drunk,” I said from my place on the floor in front of the television.
“No, I’m not,” she spat from the sofa, her sentence punctuated by a click-hiss.
“Yeah, you are,” I said, leveling my eyes at her as she raised a fresh can to her lips. The M*A*S*H intro music wrapped up for the second time, which meant it was after midnight. My mother seemed to ignore my retort, and so I turned back to watch more cynical repartee between Hawkeye and Houlihan.
I was only allowed to stay up this late on the weekends; since my father had to work on Saturday mornings, he would go to bed early while Mom and I shot the shit until the wee hours.
Many of our best conversations happened as reruns of The Golden Girls and M*A*S*H played in the background. With each can of cheap beer, and each puff from the roach that sat in the ashtray, the boa constrictor of my mother’s anxiety loosened its hold just a little bit.
Her lips loosened, too. She said things I could never believe I was hearing — confessions of her bad behavior as a teen; tales from when she and my father first met; random details from her life that I hadn’t known before. I felt uniquely able to open up to her during those…
