I Blame My Mom for Everything

Does the mother wound trump daddy issues?

The thud startles me out of a deep sleep. Rob stirs awake next to me, “what was that?” I whisper, my eyes wide open in the dark. My brain runs through the catalog of harmless middle-of-the-night noises. The ice maker refilling. The heater kicking on. The bathroom pipe clanging. It’s none of those. The thud again. Rob jumps out of bed in one quick and silent move and grabs the baseball bat in the corner.

My eyes have adjusted to the darkness and I watch his outline slip through the door and around the corner, ready to swing. I run through my options for the quickest way to get to all the kids’ bedrooms. Maybe I should call 911 first? Maybe I should follow him for backup? I look around for something to use as a weapon. Before I find anything, Rob tiptoes back into the room, bat dragging by his side.

It’s your mom. She’s in the kitchen eating donuts.

The dangerous home invader was my blind mother dragging her oxygen tank upstairs in search of a midnight snack. She got on a plane all the way from Germany to see us in the US, although her doctor strongly advised against it. Her COPD-weakened lungs might collapse. She might die. She came anyway.

Today is my mother’s four-year deathiversary. Leading up to it, I remembered the…