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When I was eight years old, my Mom took me to a waterpark a couple hours from Johnston.
A few times a year she and I would go on these tiny vacations and be the best of friends.
She’d pack my favorite lunches, we’d wake up before the sun, and we’d climb into the car and make our way.
At the waterpark, we’d run through the wet sidewalks and smile so big it would hurt.
We’d climb the tallest slides and head down in tandem, loving the thrill.
Her hair would be saturated and dark brown and the sun would pour out of her laughter.
We’d open the trunk of the car and we’d sit on the bumper, eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and she’d giggle with me about all the silly things that were on my little imaginative mind.
I would tell her all my eight year-old secrets.
I would lean my head against her freckled warm arms and daydream.
She’d always ask.
“Are you happy, Cash?”
And I’d scoff or roll my eyes.
“Yes, Ma.”
On one of those trips as a kid I got to the park and felt a bit out of sorts, lightheaded and weak.
I made a try of it, anyway and a couple hours later I was standing on the brink, overlooking an ocean-sized wave pool.
My vision started pulsing in and out as I tried to keep balance.
From many yards back, my mother saw me wobble and came running, splashing to my side.
Before I lost consciousness, her arms were around me.
Delirious, sweating with fever, my mother helped me all the way to the car.
Through my haze I remember my mother whispering to me from the other side.
She was promising me that everything was going to be okay, that I was strong, and I was safe.
We drove home as she held my hand and I slept.
In and out.
That particular bout of the flu kept me bedridden for three days.
My mother made countless trips to my room, offering me water and cold towels, soup, and love.
I don’t remember much other than I thought I was dead and that she was my only hope.
Even now, on my worst days, I close my eyes and remember my mother catching me in that wave pool with the water rushing around our heads and bodies.
Saint-like and more, she looked after her son as he fought off all the assailants, weaknesses, and doubts.
Mom.
I close my eyes and I see you now.
And in my dreams, you are there.
And you ask me again, soft and caring.
“Are you happy, Cash?”
Ma.
Where are you now? Why has this year got me so turned around? You’ve been on my mind more and more and I don’t understand a damn thing.
When I lean my head down in the evening, it’s on the arm of the lifeless old couch and you’re gone.
Ma.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I left you alone.
All crashed in the ditch.
Bleeding and broken and cold.
I should have saved you somehow.
I should have been there to carry you home.