I am on the telephone with my mother again; She is talking, like always she is talking
“Kenna I hate this job, my boss is just terrible and rude, and she was an awful hostess at the holiday party and I’m only doing this…”
This job that she is always reminding me that she hates.
“This because I’m paying your tuition. But when I get done with that I’m quitting this so fast. I’m gonna get me some land and some chickens.”
Whenever she says things like this all I can think of is junior year English from high school. My mother constantly reminds me of the character Lenny from Of Mice and Men. She asks how I am.
“I’m all right, tired, stressed about school.”
I spare her the details about how I fight with my depression and how I am still sad and hurt by everyone who used me last year. I spare Her my joy in the last photo assignment I did in which I lit a bible on fire to take pictures of, a visual discussion of my second grade teacher. I don’t tell her that I count every calorie and I don’t like eating, and I struggle against self destructive behavior, That the only reason I keep working is because its all I can do the distract myself from the truth.
The truth that seeps out like infection whenever I don’t tend to the wounds created in my family by generation gaps and moral differences. Lies filling the gaping empty space. Covering the bruises, and abuse victims make up bag.
“I’m just tired Mom, thing are all right, just fine…”
“Well, that’s good to hear. Susanne isn’t doing so well, she’s going into a coma, they don’t think she’ll be with us much longer.”
“Oh…”
My cousin has cancer; She is like a sister to my Mother. My Mother is getting choked up.
“I’m sorry Mom…”
I’ve been sitting on the desk in my dorm room, back against the wall, facing the window. The snow is falling, slowly, softly, pure, white, precious particles, gently coating campus in icing like some sort of angular brick cupcake.
She recovers from tears on the other end of the line, but I’m already gone.
Snow falling, in my mind, somewhere else, somewhere, warmer, better, I’m smiling.
Soft white noise falling from the sky building up between my mind and the rest of the world, building a mountain between myself and my mother, myself and my family.
Somewhere else, somewhere long gone I watch my mother sifting confectioners sugar into a bowl, I’ve never seen snow before. Standing on a chair so I am as tall as she, trying to see the bowl how she can see it. I imagine that snow must look something like that.
The confectioners sugar falls softly into a mountain, a barrier, and building up between one side of the bowl and the other.
Between Myself and my Mother.