—
My mom and Paul are disgustingly cute sometimes.
They have a date night once a week. It was something my mom insisted on doing when Paul was made partner at his firm. She said she was feeling a little neglected when he started bringing more work home, and I think after my dad, Mom still has a hard time believing that Paul isn’t going anywhere. But I don’t.
It’s the way he looks at her. My dad never looked at her like that. At least that I can remember. With the eyes and the grin. She doesn’t have anything to worry about. Paul loves her.
Every once in a while, he’ll surprise her and take her somewhere really special. He’s even gone so far as to buy her a new outfit, lay it out for her, and tell her exactly what time to be ready for their date. Apparently, he’s asked stores to save her size and brand preferences so he can continue to do this in the future. Barf, but yeah, okay. I get it. It’s cute. Like that scene in Field of Dreams where we find out that Moonlight Graham bought all those blue hats for his wife, so many that when he died, they found boxes of them he never got a chance to give her.
He’s also got the flowers thing down.
My mom once told him that she hated flowers. She couldn’t understand why anyone would kill something so beautiful and give it as a gift only to watch it die slowly over the next few days. So Paul got creative. He bought paintings of flowers, had origami flowers made, bought her earrings in the shape of flowers. Once he even bought her cooking flour (which I used), and it made my mom laugh.
Mom does little things for him, too. She’ll leave notes in the pockets of his clothes and slip chocolate into his lunch.
They’re disgusting to the point that it is probably uncomfortable for people to be in their presence. But it can’t be denied that they have something beautiful. It must be nice having someone to come home to every day. Someone to be gross with.
My mom is the kind of person who makes you feel important. No matter how tiny your problem is, she listens like it’s a major crisis, and she wants to make everything okay. So she’s great, but she is also the kind of person who stores soy sauce packets in the utensil drawer and forgets whether she left the garage door open. Every day. And Paul is the kind of guy who doesn’t mind secretly throwing the soy sauce packets out and calling our elderly neighbor across the street to check that the garage door is closed. I’m glad he’s patient.
I’m glad they have each other, but sometimes I think about how much happier everyone would be if I weren’t around. That’s when I feel sad and guilty because if anything happened to me, my mom would be devastated, but as long as I’m in her life, she’s always going to worry about whether or not I’m okay. I don’t know which is worse.
There are days I just wish I weren’t me.
But if I weren’t me, Maya would be texting someone else every night before she goes to bed.
Yesterday it was this:
Maya: Hey. Just thought I should tell you that I really like kissing you.
Me: I like that you like kissing me too.
Maya: Barf.
DOSAGE: 2 mg. Same dosage.
NOVEMBER 21, 2012
It was somehow decided that Dwight and I would play tennis on Monday nights. I do not play tennis. Nor have I ever expressed any desire to do so.
This is what happened.
During last week’s Academic Team match, it only took a few minutes for my mom to make eye contact with Dwight’s mom to see if Dwight was okay after his nosebleed. She walked over with Paul in tow and proceeded to rummage through her bag for wet wipes to help mop the blood off Dwight’s face.
My mom still keeps wet wipes in her purse. They usually dry out before she has the opportunity to use them, but on the rare occasion that she can bust one out and wipe something sticky off her hands, she’ll turn to me and raise an eyebrow as if to say, See? I told you they’d come in handy.
Whatever transpired between the two moms in that moment, I will never know. By the time I got in the car, it had been decided that I would spend more time with Dwight. I tried explaining that that was basically impossible, since he was already in almost all my classes AND on Academic Team, but my mom liked the idea of me hanging out with friends outside school. There was no dissuading her.
Being set up on a “playdate” in high school is not beyond the realm of behavior for my mother, but I still pretended to be shocked and outraged. Even though Paul tried to intervene, my mom was resolute. I would play tennis with Dwight.
So on Monday Dwight and I met at a tennis court near my neighborhood. The first thing I noticed was that he looked skinnier in tennis clothes than he did in his uniform at school.
“Have you ever played before?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Have you ever seen a tennis match before?”
“Nope.”
He was unfazed. Dwight taught me how to hold a racket, and for one hour we hit balls back and forth to each other. He was actually really good, way more coordinated than I thought he’d be, which is probably pretty jerky on my part. When we were done, we sat on the edge of the tennis court for a while, drinking Gatorade. I noticed he was really quiet. It was weird.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Did you just come here because your mom told you to?” he asked. The question was awkward. I’d put it in the same category as Will you be my friend?
“No,” I lied. “I’ve never played tennis before. It sounded like fun.” His face split into this big, goofy grin.
“Same time next week?”
“Sure.”
He picked up his bag and walked off the court, leaving a heavy scent of his sunscreen in the air. SPF 500, I’m sure.
And that was it. I don’t know if we’re just both so completely pathetic that our moms felt the need to set us up, or if Dwight and I were always meant to venture on this awkward journey of friendship together. But it’s okay. I guess.
—
It is not generally my prerogative to bum anyone out. I don’t want them to feel like they have to carry my problems around as if they don’t already have shit of their own festering inside them. It isn’t fair. That’s why I always say “Fine” when my mom asks how I am and why I always return Paul’s awkward smile with an equally awkward smile of my own. I do not want to be someone’s problem. I don’t want to be the reason someone has to change their life.