After I finish getting ready, I call my mom back to get the specifics on the grocery list. I sometimes wonder if my parents didn't have children, would they have starved to death? The moment my brother and I could drive we were in charge of groceries and laundry. When my parents visit they bring laundry with them. I'm totally serious! I tell them all the time it should be the other way around, but they insist that their washer is on the fritz. How can a washer and dryer be broken for ten years?
After getting ready I head out the door to the store and pick up what my mother requested. Once I am at my parents' modest home in Evanston, just north of Chicago, I lug up the four heavy bags of groceries to the front door of the suburban two story home and hear mumbling inside. Lowering the bags I listen.
"She's here! Everyone act natural!" I can hear my mom yell at the top of her lungs. Guess I didn't really need to press my ear to the door.
I sigh and slump my shoulders. Why? Because I know what this 'dinner' is about. It's my surprise birthday party. Never mind that my thirtieth birthday was over a month ago, that isn't important to my mom. I was a preemie, born almost five weeks early. My mom's due date was April ninth, but I decided to show up March third. She refuses to accept that I came early. As hippy-dippy as my mother is, she is very much the perfectionist. She expects things to go exactly as she has planned. She intended on an April baby and damn it, she was going to have an April baby.
I open the door, pick up the bags, and drag them inside. My dad is sitting in his blue lazy-boy recliner watching the Cubs on TV and my brother with his 'girl of the moment' situated next to him on the lived in tan couch.
"No please, these aren't heavy. I don't need help," I mention as I drop the bags to the floor with a loud thud.
The men nod but stay fixated on the giant flat screened television hanging on the far wall that separates the family room from the kitchen. My father is a big man. I mean tall, muscular, but now a little more thick around the middle. The only man I have ever met that matched my father in build is Mr. Payne. Oh God, I hope I don't have a father complex. I shudder just thinking about it.
My dad kept the real loser guys away from me in high school and a bit in college, but once I lived on my own he lost his control. That's how Trevor got through. Guys up until that point treated me fairly well. No one ever cheated on me for fear of my dad and, as my brother got older, of him too. For my brother, Daniel, he not only has my father’s thick dark brown hair, but also his height and build.
You would think these big burly men would help a woman struggling with heavy bags; no it's my tiny mom with her thick mass of reddish-gray hair and freckles who comes to my rescue.
"Oh my love, let me help you. Don't mind the men; you know they turn into zombies when the Cubs play."
I lean in to my mom and whisper in her ear, "Who's with Daniel?"
"I think her name is Jessie or Janie. Definitely something with a J."
I glance over to the couch as we make our way into the kitchen and see the woman curl up on my brother’s arm. Poor woman, she has maybe a week, if she's lucky two more with him until he drops her like old cheese. Stinky old cheese.
My mom insists on putting the groceries away. Which I know is so I don't see inside the refrigerator, because she has a cake hidden in there. This will be the absolute highlight of the evening, my mom's cake. That shit is like crack with extra crack sprinkled on top and then baked in crack.
It could be my utter addiction to cake and cake like products (cupcakes, prepackaged snack cakes, etc.) talking but my mom's cake is the bomb and I plan on being a terrorist tonight! Too much? Yeah, maybe.
Looking around the brown kitchen that looks like it belongs in the nineteen-eighties and not the twenty-first century, I grab a seat on a stool by the tall honey colored table in the corner.
"So, love, what has been going on in..."
My mom is interrupted by someone coming down the stairs.
”How long am I to hide upstairs? I’m bored!” my grandma’s voice comes barreling down the stairs.
I hop up from the stool and run out to the hallway to give her a hug. Her dog, Orly, comes bounding down the steps from behind, ignoring everyone as usual and curling up by the fireplace near the dining room
"Grandma! You’re here! I thought you and Orly were in Yellowstone?"
Her arms encircle my waist as she gives a tight squeeze. The woman has a grip for someone so petite. Her shoulder length cobalt blue hair tickles my chin as I lean into her. That's right; my grandma is cool like that. It's her favorite color and she has been sporting blue hair long before it ever became stylish. My grandpa told me once that her nickname was ’Blue Goose’. I have no idea why she is called Goose, and a part of me doesn't ever want to know.