“Pumpkin!”My mom’s voice was more riddled with static than a dial-up internet connection, but even that couldn’t disguise the delight shining through every syllable.“Can you hear me, Pumpkin Pie? I’m calling from the middle of the woods, your father and I are at that Santa Cruz retreat! Aunt Jess called me just this morning to tell me the good news!”
“The good news,”I repeated, hoping against hope that she was referring to my promotion, or that new rug I had found for the bathroom at a thrift store, or some mumbo-jumbo about cosmic forces that she had just read about my astrological sign— “About your engagement, silly! Ooh, I just knew good things were in store for you as soon as you got your chakras aligned. Didn’t I say good things were in store for you as soon as you balanced your energy channels??”
“You sure did, Mom,”I said, trying not to let my eye-rolling show in my voice.“Thanks for that. I definitely went and got my chakras aligned by a professional right after you told me that.”
“What a mysterious and beautiful universe our Spaceship Earth is wandering through!” she bubbled. “Remember, like Tolkien said, not all those who wander are lost!”
“Yes, Mom.”
My parents weren’t always the poster children for Aging Hippie Syndrome.
For the first eighteen years of my life, my dad wore sweater vests, played golf, and worked in an architecture firm designing vault rooms for banks. My mom worked part-time as a teller at the local bank—that was how they originally met—baked chocolate chip cookies for PTA meetings, and did quilting in her spare time.
The minute I left for college, though, Mom signed them both up for a yoga class at the local community college—dad had just had a heart disease scare, and she was determined to get him healthy—and it all just sort of snowballed from there, from yoga to meditation to sponsoring Tibetan monks to come to the United States and talk about peace, love, and throat-singing. You couldn’t move around their house these days without tripping over a prayer flag, a dream-catcher, or a batch of goat-milk soap from the farmers’ market.
There wasn’t anything wrong with this, of course, but there were definitely days when I looked at my parents and wondered exactly how committed they were to this extremely extended April Fools’ Day joke.
“Sometimes when your karma is good, the universe just aligns itself for you,” Mom was burbling on. “When can your father and I meet this Grant fellow? I got such wonderful vibrations from him in the paper, everything he said in the articles just resonated so deeply—”
It pained me to have to shatter my mom’s happy fantasy, especially when she’s spent my whole life scraping and sacrificing to make sure I had the best chance she could give me, but I couldn’t lie to her.
“Well, it’s not—it’s not exactly like that, Mom, it’s not—look, this is really complicated, maybe you could call me back later—”
“Yeah, later it will have totally become less complicated,” Kate said with a grin. I stuck my tongue out at her.
“What was that, pumpkin?” my mom said. “You’re breaking up.”
“I said maybe you could call back later—”
“Call what caterer?! Oooh, you mean the one who catered Lee and Beck’s commitment ceremony? With the vegan ice cream? Oh, what a marvelous idea, sweetie! Do you want them to do the wedding or the—”
“What! No? I said CALL BACK LATER—”
“You’re breaking up, Lacey Spacey! I’ll call that caterer and let you know what they say! We’ll be in town next week to meet that Grant fella! Ooh, find out what his sign is, and the state of his chakras! Mmm love you bye!”
What the hell had I gotten myself into?
Once my brain finally caught up to the real world, I looked back up from the phone. While I was talking to my mom, Kate had set up the little couch like a command center, the newspapers sorted according to some system decipherable only to her, scrolling through blog updates on her phone like a military commander receiving new tactical information.
“Well, the society pages are being catty, but that’s only to be expected; you know how they are. Good news is, the business rags are going with a positive note, they’re all‘a sign of increasing stability,’and‘potentially indicative of a maturity not hitherto suspected.’”Kate made a face.“Would it kill these guys to jazz up their writing a little bit? These things sound like a tax form. Get a load of this one:‘share prices rose serendipitously following the pronouncement, and are expected to peak around noon at—”
Noon. Noon…Noon! “Oh shit! Noon?”
“Lacey?”Kate looked confused.“Do you have something against noon? I mean, I don’t have strong feelings either way, but—”