mama

Follow, she said
and you did, of course.
Wait, she said,
you can’t rush this.

She said listen,
things will get better,
they always do.

Follow, she said.

* * *

In this dream, I owned a nice house in my hometown only a mile away from my mom’s house. (So obviously some parts of my life were going just a touch better)

Mom wanted to watch the Super Bowl at my house even though I didn’t have any way to stream it. She bought a VHS tape that she swore would let us watch it for really cheap (think those cassettes you’d put in your car so you could play music from your iPod over a decade ago). Of course, it didn’t work. Instead, it kept trying to start a Cartoon Network game on my PS4 which oddly would’ve been fun if it weren’t for my mother’s building frustration.

So my mom goes to the bathroom and tells me to figure it out. By now, my dad had come over as well, which was weirdly more impossible than everything else up until now (we don’t get along in the slightest bit). It was at this moment that I finally realized how ridiculous this was and that Mom’s house had cable and was within walking distance. As my dad and I came to the same conclusion, we both got up and started to get ready. He started mumbling something about going with Mom to our cousin’s house at 7:30. With the game starting around 6, I felt a little betrayed that I had been roped into family— I mean, had made food, pigs in a blanket or something, when I would’ve gathered done basically nothing for this football game, let alone watch it. When I was like “wait what?” Dad told me to shut up and mind my business, which, even despite my aversion to my father, was pretty out of character for him.

I went to my room and got in bed, about when Mom came out of the bathroom and saw me curled up underneath the covers. She checked on me (part anger, part genuine concern) and I told her what had just happened with Dad (this is probably a decent moment to mention that they never married, although he married about ten years after I was born). It didn’t really faze her. She had little to no reaction apart from grabbing her things and heading home with him.

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