Not Ready for Mom Jeans (22 page)

P.S. Sorry. I think my life decisions are slowly turning me into a stressed-out bitch. Much like the ring that turned that Gollum guy in those
Lord of the Rings
movies that Jake forced me to watch under the guise of “Oscar-Nominated Movie Night.”

Wednesday, July 2

I just read back over my last entry about the tragedy of attending Ash Leigh’s birthday party. And I pretty much want to punch myself in the face.

Because complaining about attending an annoying birthday party?

Grow up. There are bigger things to worry about—like today. My mom is starting chemo today.

A huge part of me wants to ignore it, crawl under my huge fluffy down comforter, stare at the grainy pattern of my jersey-knit sheets, and pretend that I’m still a little kid, playing hide-and-seek with Mark, and my only worry is whether or not I’ll get the newest My Little Pony for Christmas. (It wasn’t even a true worry: I always did.)

It’s hard to look at Sara sometimes since she turns me into a very un-Clare-like ball of mush anyway. And she reminds me so much of my mom. So well, yeah … open up the goddamn floodgates.

Is it wrong I desperately want to regress, pretend I don’t have a kid and go out dancing?

Or do something. Anything other than be an adult right now.

Jake and I have had the “She’ll be fine, everything is OK, blah blah blah” conversation about fifty gazillion times over the past twenty-four hours. He won’t even let me express my fears. The second I start to say, “But what if …” he holds his hand up in the air, waves it around, and somewhat harshly tells me that I can’t think like that.

I know I can’t.

But it’s all I think about.

I talked to her an hour ago. She said she’s fine, just a little tired. She said the effects won’t really kick in for a few days, so next week should be a doozy.

I finally broke down and wrote an entry about my mom on my blog yesterday. I made Jake read the comments and delete any that weren’t totally
OMG! OF COURSE SHE’LL BE FINE!!!! YOUR MOM IS AWESOME!!! YAY!!! TEAM CLARE’S MOM!!!!!
He did show me one e-mail from a Chiquita75 who suggested I take my mom out to Hooters when she’s feeling better. Now
that
is the best idea I’ve heard in a long time.

Jake did his part today by renting out every gross-out funny movie from Blockbuster and continuously fetching me Popsicles.

Friday, July 4

The sadness is still almost a solid shell around me, but I’m not going to write about it, much like not believing in Tinkerbell will make fairies disappear.

I instead choose to focus on the wonderful distractions of America’s Favorite Holiday.

Jake and I took Sara to see fireworks tonight. After our experience, I can’t help but wonder: is Fourth of July the National Act Trashy Holiday?

Is there a blast e-mail that goes out on July 3 reminding these people to launder their best wifebeater T-shirts, dust off their beanbag sets, and ice down the Milwaukee’s Best? Oh, and don’t forget your Confederate flag blanket!

I guess it makes sense.

Fireworks can be cool, but Question: why can’t people just be satisfied with like a sparkler or smoke bomb or something?

Answer: because a smoke bomb or sparkler doesn’t involve risking one’s extremities.

Why do people spend like a thousand bucks on fireworks that last for ten minutes? And they’re usually the kind of people who probably don’t have a thousand bucks to spend. I mean, it’s
literally
like burning your money. I should just offer to take these people’s money, light some newspaper on fire, and throw it on the ground and they’d be just as mesmerized.

Also, the Fourth of July allows people to bring blankets and lie on them in grassy areas in the dark. Which, to teenagers, translates to a public acceptance of lying on top of one another while barely dressed, blankets only slightly covering God-knows-what their hands are doing.

We had a group of sexually active teens on a blanket next to us. As Jake and I set our blanket down on the grass, I poked him in the ribs. “They’re emptying out their pop cans and filling them with cheap gin.”

Jake shrugged and said, “You probably did the same thing in high school.”

“True,” I said as I sat down and started getting Sara comfortable. I started to feed her a few spoonfuls of rice cereal when I poked Jake again as he was typing an e-mail on his BlackBerry. “They’re smoking weed now!”

“This weed rocks!” said the girl with the lip ring and dragon tattoo on her lower back.

“I know!” said the pregnant teenager, alternating between smoking tobacco and dope.

“Just ignore them,” Jake said as he turned Sara away from the live version of the
Jerry Springer Show.

I looked down and Sara was craning her neck at them, her “Mr. Burns from
The Simpsons
” expression on her face. Her eyebrows were pulled way down in a sinister fashion and she drummed her fingers together underneath her chin.

I didn’t think I’d have to talk to her about premarital sex so soon.

Thankfully, the fireworks display started quickly and Sara was mesmerized by the blue, white, and red hues exploding in the sky. I thought we had suffered the worst until one of the hillbillies loudly asked, “If they can make fireworks in the shape of stars and circles and stuff, why can’t they make them in the shape of something cool? You know, like a dog or a naked chick or something?”

Very philosophical question, indeed.

“Do you think they’re related to Julie?” Jake asked with a smirk. I gave him looks of Death and threw a glow stick at him.

“I’d rather be related to those people than your mother,” I said with a laugh.

Slam dunk, Clare!

Then, I nearly had a heart attack when I saw Greg off in the distance with some friends. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see him, as this fireworks show was the most popular in the city. But still. It was a bit jarring.

Dressed in pressed khaki shorts and collared polo shirts, Greg, Nate, and Ethan stood around a picnic table covered in appetizers, bottles of wine, and champagne flutes. Tanned, fit, and well-rested, the crowd of friends around Greg raised their wineglasses and cheered.

Surrounded by Milwaukee’s Best cans and wifebeater tank tops, I was very aware that my section so would not have been offered lifeboats on the
Titanic.
We were most definitely in steerage.

And that tiny longing came back. To be over there, sans child. Or to at least suck the eight hours of sleep right out of their heads.

As the fireworks ended, Sara (with her infinite sense of timing) had a massive diaper explosion.

“EW!” the hillbillies on the blanket next to us gagged.

Yes, ew. And I wasn’t totally grossed out when the girl wearing a white wifebeater T-shirt with no bra underneath screeched, “LARRY! I TELLED YOU! YOU CAN ONLY STICK IT IN MY BUTT! I CAN’T HAVE NO MORE KIDS!”

Jake and I thought the excitement for the night was over when we got home, but some of our neighbors in the next building over decided that 2:00 a.m. was a reasonably appropriate time to set off an additional fireworks display, complete with drunken yelling.

After Sara woke up and started screaming, I made Jake go outside and talk to them.

According to him, it went something like this:

Jake: Hi, guys, sorry to be a drag, but could you guys please stop it? It’s two a.m. and my six-month-old just woke up.

Drunk Guy with Two Missing Teeth: Almosht done, go-in to bed now.

Drunk Girl with Bad Spiral Perm: FUCK HIM! WE AIN’T DONE YET!

Jake: Great, thanks.

I wanted to call the police but concurred with Jake’s reasoning that being toothless and having a bad perm is punishment enough.

Monday, July 7

My very savvy readers overwhelmingly agreed with my assessment of Fourth of July as National Blow Off Your Hillbilly Hand Day. A few even posted similar stories, like CKLady, whose white-trash neighbor blew his hand off with an M-80 last year and his wife drove him to the hospital only after she and her friends set off the rest of the fireworks. Since the fireworks were illegal and they had paid good money for them and didn’t want them to go to waste, obviously.

Jen2485, not surprisingly, wrote:
U r so judgmental. there is nothing wrong with having an American flag decal on your car. R u not proud to be an American? Guess not since u don’t like 4
^th
of July. U shuld just join the Taliban. Operation Enduring Freedom Rulez!

I almost wrote her and said,
U R an idiot. Love ya!

But no amount of sarcasm can change my reality or extinguish the gloominess that’s beginning to form around me again.

I just got off the phone with my mom.

She sounds awful. Weak, tired, dazed. Sick. She sounds sick.

Because she is.

Friday, July 18

Saving me from another evening of sobbing into a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and throwing DVD cases at the wall, Jake offered an idea tonight that brightened my mood.

“Clare, come in here,” he called from our bedroom earlier tonight.

“Wha?” I said, distracted.

“Just come here,” he said, his voice raising.

“
Shhhhhh.
You’ll wake up Sara,” I hissed.

“Please come in here,” he said again.

“Fine,” I said, and sighed loudly. I shuffled into the bedroom and put my hands on my hips. “What is so important? I’ll have you know that you just tore me away from
Deep Impact
.”

He looked up from the laptop and squinted his eyes. “The asteroid movie?”

“Correction: comet movie. Elijah Wood was just about to outrun the fiery wall of destruction on his ten-speed.”

“Oh jeez,
so-ory.
Didn’t mean to make you miss
that.
What’s next?
Showgirls
?”

I started to sit down on the bed but froze mid-squat. “
Showgirls
is a good movie.”

“Seriously. Did you seriously just say that?” he said, and covered his eyes with his hand.