My mom reaches up and wipes a tear off of my cheek I don't even know is there.
“Marriage was never for me. I knew that early on but I chose to ignore it. I never dreamed of having a family or a house with a white picket fence and being a soccer mom. But then I had you and I knew I needed to try. It just didn’t work for me. But your father? He is definitely a marrying man, and he is a wonderful husband. The problem was never him. It was the losers he married,” she says with a smile. “You may have always been afraid to try because of how you grew up and what you believed, but that doesn’t mean it’s who you are. You have more of your father in you than you know. You are already a better mother than I ever was, and I guarantee that when Carter does pop the question, you will be an amazing wife.”
For the first time in my twenty-five years, my mother actually says something that made sense and gave me pause. And not the “What the fuck is she saying?” pause.
I had put up a wall all my life to protect myself. If I pretended like I didn’t really want the American dream of a husband and kids, then eventually I would believe it and no one would be able to hurt me. Until Liz and Jim’s wedding, I didn’t realize just how much I wanted that wall to crack. Now that it had though, I was right where I never wanted to be - scared, confused and upset. I knew I needed to get my emotions under control and stop acting like a crazy person. I needed to man up and talk to Carter. I could feel the distance between us growing every day that I continued to lie to him and explained away my detachment and rocky emotions by saying they were all just because of the pregnancy. I had acted like a big baby all these months when all of it might have been fixed by one little conversation.
After Gavin’s party, I will make sure that we sat down and talked.
“What about Carter’s family? Are his parents still trying to recover from ceiling fan baseball?” my mom asks with a laugh, changing the subject to something a little less depressing.
“They’ve been okay. His mom actually sent me a big box of brand new baby clothes and a few blankets. His grandmother is the one I’m most surprised about. She really should want to kill me but she sent me something too, and I found out she actually has a sense of humor.”
“Oh? What was it?” my mom asks.
“A onesie that said ‘Too cute to play with your ugly ass kid’.”
~
“Why the hell are those bitches over there giving me a dirty look?” Liz asks as she stares down five mothers who have accompanied their sons to Gavin’s party.
“I’m guessing it’s because the woman who brought her husband just noticed that he’s been staring at your boobs that are spilling out of your shirt,” I tell her as I finish cutting the cake and placing it on paper plates.
“Oh give me a break. One look at that guy and you can tell he’s wound up so tight that if I blew him a kiss he’d probably bust a nut. None of those women look like they ever have sex unless it’s to procreate,” she complains.
“They probably only do it in the missionary position with the lights off,” I add.
“I bet they think doggy style is a type of line dance,” Liz says with a laugh, blowing the husband a kiss.
I smack her hand and give her the evil eye.
“Will you cut it out? I have to be around these mothers all the time at Gavin’s school. Play nice,” I warn her.
“Look!” she says excitedly. “That poor guy just adjusted his junk. He totally came in his pants.”