“Honey, are you crying?”
I sigh as I
shove the keys to room 418 of Murphy Hall into the keyhole and fumble with the
lock while my mom waits with bated breath for my answer. It is always like this—since second grade,
when my teachers sent home concerned letters about my constant crying at
school, and fourth grade when my aunt died, while trying to cross a high way in
Myrtle Beach—my mom has made it a mission in her life to find the small quaver
in my voice, or the tremble of my lower lip and eradicate all the bad things in
my life. It is admirable, and I know
that she means well, but after receiving the same worried greeting all through
middle school and high school, and now college, the question is old. I try to regulate my breathing, so I don’t
sound like I am sobbing, and not let the frustration seep into my voice when I
answer her, “No mom. I’m not crying.”
I enter my
dorm and sling my book bag onto my unmade bed, picking my way through the
ungodly mess my roommate made of the room when she did her laundry last night.
“You don’t
have to snap at me,” she said, and I know she heard it—that teeny bit of anger that I always have
when I talk to her. Compared to when I
was in high school, that caustic hostility I always associated with thoughts of
my mother has faded into white noise in my subconscious, but I guess old habits
die hard. Resentment is hard to kill,
and as childish as it is to think that my mom and her affair is the reason my
parents divorced, there is always going to be a nasty little whisper in my head
to contend with.
“I know,
mom,” I say as I sit at my desk, staring out the window while white snow tumbles
to the ground outside. “I’m sorry.” I meant it, too— for everything. I was sorry for hating her in high school, and
blaming the failure of my parent’s tail spinning marriage on her. I was sorry for the time’s I had screamed at
her, and slammed the door in her face.
And I was mostly sorry for never wanting to be like her.
“I was only
trying to help,” she sniffs daintily into the phone, and as much as I want to
disagree with her—I can’t; helping is all she ever tries to do. If I had to choose the kind of mother I would
want to be like in the future, I suppose it would be like her-- hopefully wiser.
“I know,
mom. I have to go, but I will talk to
you later.”
I hang up the phone.
