Chapter 6
The morning of my birthday, I lie awake in bed staring at the ceiling. Thirty-five. When I was a kid this age seemed so far away like it existed in another universe. I thought I’d have my life together by now. I pictured a garden apartment with a balcony overlooking Central Park where I’d sip a glass of wine after a long day of writing my next bestseller. My husband would be in the kitchen cooking some fabulous meal after he walked our twin Basset Hounds, Bogart and Bacall. Very First Wives Club but without the messy divorce.
That’s not the reality I face today.
My romantic life is a series of failures with Paul being the most recent painful example. My career took a left and then a U-turn until it drove off a cliff. My life is a thrift-store jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces someone dumped on a table and forgot.
I look down at my phone for a jolt of serotonin. Birthday messages and posts from friends make me smile. But then I see a message from Paul: Happy Birthday, Sammy. Enjoy your day. I’d love to celebrate with you. My first instinct is to delete it and not reply but I’m feeling so low. Some attention from Paul may be exactly what I need. My defenses are down. Thanks. Sure , I reply, and he immediately gives me a thumbs up. Thumbs up? What have I done? I’m contemplating sending some kind of reply that would reverse my decision to see Paul when there’s a knock.
I walk over and open the door. My mother shouts, ‘Happy birthday!’
‘Thanks, Mom,’ I say and we hug. My mother has always been the best hugger in the world. She was designed for hugging. Her ample cushioning allows her to squeeze tightly and make it feel like nothing could ever get in the way. She has an uncanny ability to transfer her love to the hug. Countless times, I’ve witnessed strangers comment on the high quality of my mom’s hugs. She squeezes just right. Once a cashier was in tears after my mom hugged her for accepting a coupon they both knew had expired.
She brushes my hair behind my ears and whispers, ‘Happy birthday,’ again but this time it’s less of an announcement and more a way of saying, I love you. She sits down in the chair next to the couch. ‘Alright, Pumpkin Pie .’ She pats her lap. ‘Come here.’
‘Mom, I’m thirty-five years old now. I think we can do away with…’ Before I can get the final words out my mother holds her fingers to her mouth and fake spits.
‘Pooh! Pooh!’ she says. ‘This is tradition and tradition must not be broken.’
I walk over to her and, as tradition dictates, sit on her lap. I try to balance myself with my arms on the side of the couch so I don’t crush her. She begins: ‘It was the middle of the night and I was staying at your Aunt Shug’s.’ I look at her face and see that even saying her name is still hard for my mom. It’s hard to hear. I wonder if maybe she wants to stop but she pats my head and in my mind I can hear her reminding me that when Aunt Shug was in hospice she kept telling us, ‘Life is for the living.’
I lean my head on my mom’s shoulder and settle in to hear the story I’ve heard exactly thirty-four times before. ‘It was the middle of the night and I was having this wonderful dream. I was boarding an old-fashioned steamship for a long journey. I carried a large leather valise but I couldn’t remember having packed it. When the ship left the dock there were streamers and a big celebration, but I felt sad and lonely until…’
I feel about eight years old, but in a good way. ‘The suitcase,’ I say. ‘The suitcase!’
‘That’s right.’ My mother nods. ‘The suitcase starts to move and I open it and there’s a beautiful baby smiling and laughing at me, and that baby is you. I knew right then that neither one of us would ever be alone again.’ Corny as it sounds, tears come to my eyes. I love my mother very much. As if she knows what I am feeling, she kisses my cheek and then continues, ‘When I woke up from the dream I had such a pain in my belly, and I knew you were ready. We called Daddy, who was on a business trip in Albany, and your aunt drove me to the hospital, and six hours and twenty-three minutes later, we were holding the most beautiful baby boy in the entire world in my arms, and his name was Sam. That was exactly thirty-five years ago today and I love that little boy just as much today as I did the day he was born. Even more.’
For a second, I think about how much our little family has changed since I was born. I’m sure my mom thought it was going to be her and my dad and my aunt forever. But Dad died when I was an infant, and now, with my aunt gone, it’s really just the two of us. I pick my head up from her shoulder and give my mother a kiss on the cheek. ‘I love you, Mom.’
‘Happy Birthday,’ she croaks – my weight on her lap is suffocating her so I stand up.
‘Let me get you some hot water and lemon, Mom.’ I head to the kitchen where I keep a ziplock bag of artificial sweetener separate from anything I might eat.
‘Thank you, pumpkin, but I want to give you your present,’ she says. ‘I’ve been waiting twenty years to give you this.’ Twenty years? Has she been malting her own scotch in the basement? I assume I’ve misheard her and go back to the living room. My mood of tenderness quickly evaporates, giving way to my usual mood of suspicion. I know she has some big surprise planned, and I’m trying to put it off.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to wait for the water to boil?’ I ask.
‘I’m sure,’ she says. I go back to turn off the stove and then sit on the couch next to her. She hands me the package, with pink and yellow ribbon curling in every direction on top. I shake it a little.
‘Is it breakable?’ I ask, stalling.
‘Don’t worry. You can’t break it by dropping it on the floor.’
She’s a sphinx in a Chico’s pantsuit. I shake the box again and I realize it’s very light. There’s almost no weight to it, so the good news is she hasn’t found some hideous rainbow mother–son matching harness for us to wear. A gift card would be great but my mother would never consider a present that allows me the freedom to make my own choices. I realize the only way I can stop her riddles is to open the gift.
‘That wrapping paper has only been used a few times, so be careful,’ my mother warns me. When she says wrapping paper has only been used a few times she means she bought it when Obama was in office and has used it every birthday and Christmas since. With my mother you get to keep the gift but not the wrapping. I carefully run my finger between the tape and the paper’s edge. Mom takes the intact sheet from me and tries to smooth out the creases with her hand on her lap. I slowly take the lid off the box and reveal a slightly yellowed envelope with what looks like a child’s bubbly handwriting on it. I turn the envelope over and it all comes back to me.