Chapter Thirty-Four #2
I never picked up that my summers with the grannies began after my confession about creepy men leering at me in my tutu.
Before that I’d get only a week or two to feel like a kid.
Evidently, my grandmother threatened not to give me back if she wasn’t going to protect me better, so my mom showed up and surprised everybody with her father.
“I also spent decades dealing with Mother’s and Wanda’s shenanigans,” my mom continued while I flipped through emotions like a TV remote. “I didn’t have a mom because she had a best friend, and I was just baggage from the asshole.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” I automatically said, but she just shook her head, shoulders so slumped and defeated.
“I spent so many years wishing I could join their duo, thinking once I was older, they’d finally let me in.” Beneath the surface, her deeper emotions roil, but she buries them before they can take hold, similar to how she trained me to repress mine. “Instead, they chose you.”
Guilt and empathy pinged, softening my insides, and I grappled with offering to shoulder the burden.
It wasn’t my responsibility to fix her relationship with her mother—we have enough to do on ours, although I’m honestly not sure she’ll ever be emotionally mature enough or willing to put in the effort.
“I don’t want you looking back at your life and wondering what if like I sometimes do,” she said once she’d maneuvered her suitcase onto the departure curb. “Not that I’m not happy, and I’d choose you and your siblings every time—I need you to hear that.”
She stretched out her hand to squeeze mine, and I so badly needed to hear it I clung on extra tight, unshed tears forming in my eyes.
“There are avenues I didn’t pursue, things I didn’t think I could do as a single woman. But you blasted through every obstacle in your path, no problem.”
Funny because I recalled so, so many problems, most of which I took on while scared out of my mind. A broken pipe in my first apartment that destroyed what little furniture I’d collected, a superior who made inappropriate comments, and panic attacks in my car or the office bathroom.
Mom thought I was strong in ways I didn’t consider myself, and I snagged hold of it like a life preserver.
I’m strong. I can withstand whatever comes along.
From finding an apartment to settling into a new office and position, they’re all things I’ve done before and can do again. It’s really the idea of telling my grandmother causing the most stress.
I sense her beside me and slow my breaths, gradually returning to the present moment and a steady heart rate. Then I decide I can’t take it anymore, so I flip up from my half-crouched position and just blurt it out. “I accepted a job in Miami.”
Both women drop their jaws, and this isn’t the right time or the place, but out it comes anyway.
About Simone Fairfax, the feminist Don Draper of the publicity world, with a reputation as flawless as her client retention, and how meeting Maddie at the open house led to the connection.
“At the end of the interview, she told me the agency takes on events and emergencies as a team.”
And at the end of the call, Simone offered me the job, complete with a salary and benefits package that made me cry tears of joy.
And nope, those tears were absolutely not for any other reason, and I was sticking to that story.
“That’s when I knew it was the place for me.” Not an outright lie, but it tastes bitter for reasons I can’t pinpoint.
Wanda slides between my grandmother and me, slinging an arm around both our shoulders. “Aww, I’ll miss our third musketeer, but Mia’s worked very hard to get here.”
I have, and I appreciate the recognition of that, as it certainly wasn’t all pool parties and bingo. By creating a change in a community that housed so many people I love, I also proved my original success wasn’t a farce, I merely needed a breather.
Wanda turns to my grandmother, whispering in her ear as the male instructor who slunk away, panicked over female emotions, returns to ask if we’re ready to go.
“It’ll all be okay, I promise.” Wanda kisses us both on the cheek, leaving behind pearly pink imprints. Under normal circumstances I might wipe it away, but I want it there as a reminder I’m loved.
“You still in?” she asks me, and I side-eye my grandma.
I’ll climb aboard the propeller plane with a painted-on smile regardless of how nervous I am, because I told Wanda I would. Frankly, I couldn’t come up with a grander goodbye or a more suitable end to my chaotic, incredible summer of adventures.
“Fine.” Grandma Helen spits out the word, causing Wanda and I to excitedly widen our eyes at each other.
“You,” she says to our instructor, and his spine shoots ramrod straight. “Bring me the fucking waiver and a harness.”
“How very Thelma and Louise of you,” I tease, referencing the movie they showed me one year to explain their friendship. In a lot of ways, it confused me—there are so many other options besides driving your car off a cliff with your best friend.
Now that I’m older, I understand where the women were coming from.
I might not do it as loud or as flashy or as…
permanently, but I rebel against societal expectations in my own way.
I teach senior citizens to love their bodies as they are, I work to love my body as it is, and this summer I empowered a fabulous group of grandmothers to live out a few of their regrets.
It’s more satisfying than the sensational turnout for the open house. And I could only imagine what the women of the world could accomplish if we stopped drawing lines between generations and combined our various skillsets with our wealth of compassion and wisdom instead.
The next thirty minutes whiz right by, along with treetops and clouds in the sky, until we’re over ten thousand feet in the air.
I can’t hear much over the droning engine or jingling buttons, and this tiny plane feels every current of air, so I also lose a couple of minutes to overthinking here and there.
We’ll jump two-by-two and link up mid-fall. Every sound I make is amplified in my head, the pounding rush of blood and thick gulps of air.
“Goggles.” Grandma gestures at her own pair, and I can’t feel my face or my fingers anymore. Just my heated skin and the icy cold sweat pricking my spine, because that means—I gulp and fumble with my own goggles—it’s almost time.
Landing is what always makes me nervous, so I guess yay for not having that issue today, but this still isn’t the way I’d personally go.
Wanda and Grandma Helen grin at each other, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think they plotted this. But it was Wanda and I joining forces, right?
Again, not the time.
Since it’s Wanda’s show, we motion her ahead first, and the crew starts securing her to her instructor. It’s awkward being belted to other people, like giant infants in chest carriers, and we get the giggles.
We don’t stop grinning and poking fun at each other until the opening of the door steals our laughter and our breath.
Then suddenly Grandma Helen lunges at me, dragging her instructor forward half a foot or so, and I’m thinking this is one of those “decisions of other participants” situations the release form warned me about.
“Promise you’ll take time to relax and to play,” she yells over the noise, hugging me the best she can with all our extra contraptions, her instructor so blasé, looking like this happens on the daily, and I suppose it does, “and that it won’t be so long between visits from now on.”
Easy, and so she sees how sincerely I mean it, I stare her straight in the eye. “I promise.”
Wanda’s up to jump, so Grandma Helen and I clasp hands, gripping hard enough to cut off circulation as we watch her and her instructor leap through the open door and disappear.
My stomach goes the opposite direction, attempting to flee via my throat.
“See you on the ground, dear girl,” my grandmother calls, and then she and her instructor are gone.
Mere seconds later, it’s my turn.
The lad I’m strapped to asks if I’m ready and no, not in a million years.
Thelma and Louise and their infallible friendship come to my mind again, and I smile as I recall Wanda saying she’ll miss their third musketeer. I guess when it comes down to it, what matters more than planning every possible pathway is who’s willing to take the big leaps with you.
It’s definitely why, even though I can’t feel any of my limbs, excitement strikes me like lightning. “Ready,” I shout, and then I’m freefalling through the air, a thrill in my belly and grinning cheeks plastered to my eyebrows.