1. Mason
Mason
Age-Eleven
The best part about summer isn’t sleeping in and not having to go to school. It isn’t all the fun football practices and games at the rec center. It isn’t even seeing all my friends again at camp. It’s all the “Yes Days” my mom and I do.
I mean, we do them all year round—especially when I’m feeling down or if I had some big accomplishment, like good grades or after award days for school and sports—but during the summer, they happen a lot more, just because.
My mom pretends they’re a drag just to make me laugh, but I know she loves them too. She loves doing anything fun with me.
I didn’t sleep much last night after she told me today would be a “just-because Yes Day,” since we hadn’t had one in a while.
I stayed up all night lying in my bed, thinking up all the coolest things I could ask her to do.
I mean, it’s every kid’s dream to have a full day where everything they want, they get to have, and the adults can’t tell you no.
“Yes Days” were me and my mom’s special little thing.
They started after a really rough time with my dad.
Things had gotten really bad at home for a while.
Anytime he’d come home from a business trip that year, I never heard the end of all the ways I was failing as his son—how I wasn’t doing well enough in school, or I wasn’t scoring enough in a game, or I just wasn’t good enough in any way he could come up with.
“Yes Days” were how my mom tried to distract me most of the time when it got bad, and she wanted to cheer me up; then it just stuck.
No matter what I asked, she had to say yes—Candy on top of my pancakes for breakfast? Yes. Trampoline park, and then the best ice cream shop next door after? Yes. Two movies back-to-back, even though it would end up being past my bedtime? Yes.
She’d smile at me every time I tested her and tried to come up with something so insane I just knew she’d break and say no. But she wouldn’t.
“It’s Yes Day, baby. You’re the boss.”
Dad hated it. He said it was stupid to let a kid think he ran the show, that the world didn’t revolve around a kid who wanted too much sugar and wasted afternoons.
But Dad isn’t home; he’s never home. He lives on airplanes and in hotels out of state more than he does with us, so it doesn’t matter what he thinks when it’s just Mom and me.
He lives in his world, and Mom and I live in ours.
She’s my best friend. She isn’t like some of my friends’ moms who stay in their rooms and make us play alone all day.
She’s the mom who plays catch with me in the yard until her hair sticks to her cheeks from sweat, who lets me dump a whole bottle of bubble bath into the tub when I was little just to see how high the foam could rise, who sits at every single one of my sports games, even when the bleachers burn her legs or it pours down raining.
She’s always there, raincoat and umbrella in hand, waving and shouting in excitement.
Dad doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get us. I don’t think he even likes us.
He treats my mom like someone who works for him, like she’s just around to keep the house clean, appointments scheduled, food on the table whenever he’s home, and drive me to school, tutoring, and sports.
He’s never even hugged her or kissed her in front of me, like I see my friends’ parents do.
He just comes home and nitpicks the way she loaded the dishwasher, or the way she folded his shirts wrong, or how the food she cooked could have been better.
He’d get annoyed and call her dramatic if she coughs too hard, then tell her to stop being weak if she says she’s tired after a long day of running around taking care of everyone else.
He never says thank you or tries to help out.
I never even see him smile. I don’t think he knows how to be happy. He’s like the Grinch.
I hate the way he talks to her. I hate the way she never smiles when he’s home. I hate that I want him to love us.
The only time I see him happy is when he’s talking about his company or sports games.
It’s always, “One day, son, this will all be yours. You’ll take over the company one day, so you have to be ready. You have to be the best.”
So I try to be good at everything for him. I practice harder than anyone else on my team. I make the honor roll even though I hate school. I smile when people talk about how nice our house is, how grateful I should be, how lucky I am…
But I don’t feel lucky. How could I feel anything when no matter what I do, I’m never enough for him—we are never enough for him.
I’ve never done anything that impressed him. If I do good, that’s just what I’m supposed to do. But if I mess up, he makes sure to remind me I’m doing it wrong.
“You think this life pays for itself? You think money grows on trees? I bust my ass so you can have everything, Mason. Don’t embarrass me. Don’t be a failure.”
At least I have my mom. I don’t know what I’d do without her.
On “Yes Days,” I don’t have to think about him. I don’t have to think about anything. It’s just me and her.
I run down the stairs and into the kitchen in my pajamas, bouncing with excitement.
Mom is wearing one of Dad’s old Texas A&M T-shirts that goes down to her knees, and her hair is in a messy bun, spilling everywhere.
She’s wearing her big fluffy slippers, and music is playing loudly from a speaker on the counter.
She’s smiling and dancing as she flips pancakes on the stove.
When she hears me, she turns and holds the spatula out like a microphone.
I lean in and start singing the chorus of Sweet Caroline with her, both of us bouncing our heads to the beat.
When the song changes, she swings the spatula in the air like a wand. “Guess what day it is, Mason!”
“Yes Day!” I shout.
When she waves the spatula again, I see her hand twitch hard, making her drop it. It was weird, but she just laughed and picked it up. Then tossed it in the sink and grabbed another.
“I’m so clumsy lately,” she laughs out. “I’m getting too old, son. It’s almost retirement home time for me.”
She just turned thirty. She isn’t old. But lately she jokes a lot about her body not working like it used to.
We eat so many pancakes that I think my stomach might pop, especially since we drowned them in a full bottle of chocolate syrup.
Then we head to the arcade, and I make her play every game with me, even the ones she had no idea how to play.
We laugh and eat way too much pizza before heading to Naples Pier, one of my favorite spots.
I love looking out at the ocean. It’s my favorite place on the planet.
I would love to be a marine biologist—I know I can’t be one, but I like imagining it. I love how big the ocean is, how much people still don’t know about it. I feel that way about myself…that most people don’t know a lot about me. If they did…maybe they’d be nicer to me, right?
My mom is nice. She’s the only one, though.
My happy bubble is here, near the ocean, where I can imagine how much more is out there for me in the world, far away from here.
By the time the sun goes down, we’re exhausted. We drive back home with half-cherry, half-Coke slushies from the gas station, windows rolled down, and the music turned up loud.
We’re sitting at a red light, playing I Spy, and right as the light turns green and Mom starts to drive, she starts coughing.
I thought that she had just choked on her drink a little, but she keeps coughing, and it sounds really bad.
The car jerks, and she grips the wheel really tight, trying to fix it.
“Mom?”
My slushie slips from my hands and spills on the floor.
She doesn’t answer, just keeps coughing—harder and harder. Her hand keeps twitching, and it looks like she can’t hold the wheel very well. The car swerves to the side before she slams on the brakes.
“Mom!”
My heart is beating so fast.
She’s still trying to smile at me like everything’s okay, but she’s breathing really loudly, and her body is shaking.
“It’s okay, baby,” she whispers to me. “I’m okay.”
She isn’t, though. This isn’t normal.
Right?
Her hand won’t stop shaking, and her foot slips when she tries to drive again.
I’ve never been this scared in my life.
She puts the car in park and keeps trying to breathe, but it’s like she can’t get in enough air. I grab her flip phone from the cup holder and hit Dad’s number that’s on speed dial.
He answers on the third ring, already annoyed. “What?”
“Dad, something’s wrong with Mom—”
“Geez, Mason. What now?”
“She—she can’t hold the wheel right, she’s coughing a lot—she—”
“Really? That’s what I answered in the middle of a meeting for?” He seems annoyed, like he didn’t even want to answer in the first place. “You don’t need to panic every time she coughs. Your mother’s always been dramatic. This is what she does, Mason.”
My eyes burn. “But Dad, she can’t—”
“She’s fine. Stop acting like that, and put her on the phone.”
When I look at her, she’s slumped against the seat, still trying to smile. She just shakes her head.
“She can’t,” I whisper.
Silence. Then my dad breathes out a long sigh. “I don’t have time for this. Grow up. Tell her to get home and go to bed since she can’t function. I’ll see y’all Friday.”
Click.
The line goes dead, and I stare at the phone, angry that he won’t help when she really needs it.
I look over at my mom, scared because I don’t know what to do.
“It’s okay, baby,” she says, placing her cold hand on my cheek. “Don’t be scared. I’m okay.”
“You’re not okay,” I tell her, almost crying now. “I need to call—”
“Call 9-1-1…they’ll know what to do. I don’t think…that I can drive.”
I nod fast and dial 9-1-1.
I don’t even know what to tell them. I just know I need her to be okay.