A Blind
Date With(out) My Mother
I thought
I was past the need to have our roles defined, rigid, laid out
before me—I'd accepted the grayness of matters like these, but
when my
sister calls to say she's ten minutes away with my mother in tow—my
mother
who's never seen where I live, my apartment, the bed I share, the toilet
I
use—I'm thrown into a redefinition of self and confuse the roles
of mother
and daughter more than they had been in every moment preceding the call—first,
I ponder
locking
the door and pretending to have left, then
start cleaning furiously, reminded all the while that I'm as old as
she was
in the first year of her first marriage, and far more mature—I
scrub dry
cereal bowls, turn off my computer, put on a bra, dust briefly, then
decide
to make iced tea since there's only bottled water in my fridge—but
now it
feels more like preparing for a date, as the need to impress impresses
on
me—my boyfriend at work, couldn't I be single, waiting for a man,
setting
out wine and trying to think of something sophisticated to say about
the
brand or year, something, anything at all to say before he looks at
me
apologetically and decides I'm not for him?
When they
never come, this new role seems stark and real, more
all-encompassing—the one who ends up alone, sits rejected in a
sterile room
without dinner. I felt no absence before the call my mother didn't even
make, but now feel even detached from me since I changed so swiftly
for her—can't find my way back.
Copyright © 2004 Stacia Fleegal