The Skeleton and the Praying Mantis
No balloons on Father's Day 🎈
I am in the car with my mother on yet another dreary, overcast, all-day rain fest in New York City. It's Father's Day - a Sunday. My mom remarks on the difference in the air between Mother's Day and Father's Day. I glance outside at a relatively empty street; a man crosses the intersection ahead of us, shielding his head with a light coat. There are no balloons or families in pastels. Just grey and the non-stop drip of raindrops rolling down my passenger side window as I silently peer through, willing this unpleasant ride to be over. Neither of us ever had a father to celebrate. The day is uninspired and fittingly ordinary.
We suddenly pull up to a bus stop on Myrtle Avenue. This is most certainly not a parking spot, and I instinctively pull out my phone to bide my time as I wait for my mom to enter a store, shop, and come out—the anxiety-ridden part-time job I have held throughout my life. There's never a spot available in New York City, and it will always "just be a second".
"Let's just take our chances," my mom quips with slight exasperation.
"What are we doing now?" I ask, carefully. I don't want to sound too annoyed, too sad, or too inquisitive. Just very ~cool~ about it all.
"We're going to go eat lunch and then go down to that Asian market down the street," she says casually. I'm a bit annoyed by the assumption, and I'm also not in the mood to play "Dining Dead."
"Are you hungry?" I ask. What a ridiculous question, but it makes sense. I was not hungry, and I most certainly did not want to watch my mom push her fork coquettishly across her plate while I sat in silence across from her, shrinking from the mere idea of others in the restaurant perceiving me.
She said "yes" mildly before finally asking if I was hungry.
"No", I said flatly. I was a bit, but I had struggled with my appetite for the last six months, dropping about 25 pounds and counting. It felt like a waste in more ways than one.
She huffed quietly before putting on her left turn signal and waiting for a break to leave our very illegal parking spot and venture back into the mainstream of slow traffic down Myrtle Avenue, the transition between quiet residential, less gentrified Ridgewood into Bushwick, already ravaged for all of its "quaintness" many years prior.
"Well, I'll just drop you off back at home because I have a lot of errands to do. I really have to get over to Mom's house and pick up the mail," she said casually, referring to the now vacant home of my deceased Grandmother, who we were finally going to be getting a headstone for. That was the primary purpose of this rare venture out of the house for us, and it had come at the expense of quite the begging and reminding on my part over the last two months. However, the employee on the phone must have forgotten about the holiday. We drove past it, fully shuttered and grey just like the weather. I had told her it was coming up, but she had not slowed down at all. My mom did not seem displeased and we talked about it no further. We continued down Metropolitan Avenue until we reached Myrtle Avenue.
"Ah, I'm just going to stop here really quick," she says before suddenly jerking the car to the right and pulling up to yet another "parking spot." I peer up at the blue pole with the white signs on top, indicating, surprise, surprise, another bus stop. In two seconds flat, she had hopped out of the car and dashed into a doorless Asian Market selling affordable shrimp and large, meat-like mushrooms that would largely come to rot in her fridge.
I pulled out my phone, which displayed a picture of Nina Simone writing. There were no notifications to check. I opened up "How We Feel," a mood-tracking app I seemed to like the most of the many I had tried. I downloaded it again the day prior after my psychiatric nurse practitioner recommended it. I was trying a new medication. I paid her $475 to talk to me about the way I feel.
I typed in "forgotten." No dice. I then searched for "abandoned".
Abandoned - feeling left behind and not considered, wanted, or cared about.
Alienated - feeling like you have been made a stranger to others, like they have no feelings or affection towards you.
Two irregularly shaped blue blobs float, overlapping each other. When I was a kid, I feared my mom would abandon me. I don't talk about it much. You'd be surprised how little I talk about my childhood in my Medicaid-provided therapy journey. I'm sure my mom would hate to hear it and tell me that was my "depression talking." I would think through what I would do if that were to happen. I would jump from the back seat to the driver's and navigate my small but long legs to the gas and the brake. I would drive to my Grandma's house. She would care for me. Yes, I felt like a bother from an early time.
I am having a little pity party. No tears, no thrashing, no quick texts for help. I eat it. I peer out onto Myrtle Avenue again. What am I doing here? Why didn't I stay in California? It sucks here. It sucks there, too, but at least the weather is nice, and I could hike. It's always raining and I'm always complaining.
On the way home, I ask my mom, "Would you say you're in a good mood?" She says, "Yes, I am. See? Once I get out of the house, I'm OUT," waving her hand above the steering wheel. She asks if I am, but I ignore it. It seems so ridiculous, another slap to the face but after all, I'm "too sensitive." I'm also bewildered by her response. "HOW?!" I scream in my head, wondering how much of a fight her genetics put up around conception. They seem shrimpy to say the least. I remind myself to continue with this new strategy of "quieting it down," silencing myself, silencing how I think and what I would like to say to my mother. It's a bitter spoonful of cough syrup with no sugar, juice, or chaser to follow. Still, I'd rather take it over the loud argument that will only lead to me laying motionless across my bed, truly hoping for a savior that I know will not come and that's fine but it just really fucking sucks, okay?
I've likened my mother to a praying mantis for some time. I call her that jokingly in moments of levity. She seems to enjoy it. Large peering eyes, sharp edges, scissor-like arms. An ambush predator, quick to strike at the first perceived moment of opposition. I do not vilify her, but in rare moments where she raises her hand to hold mine, I flinch at the stiffness.
I then whip myself for having the reflex.
It's hard for me to talk about my mother on the internet. She probably would care about the potential of some snoopy former family member or acquaintance reading something negative. I'm the sole offspring of my parents: an only daughter, a first-generation immigrant. Rigidity and natural overcompensation in response to past traumas come into play in both the Jamaican and Chinese sides of her bloodline. She is tough. I respect her a lot. She overfeeds and spoils my dogs. There's an uncomfortable amount of nuance in life that I find frustrating in my very black-and-white, all-or-nothing brain. There's a lot of grey here as well.
My mom likes to avoid things often. I feel dismissed a lot. My brain did a bit of a hop-skip when I put the two together. I ask ChatGPT to tell me what an avoidant dismissive is. Avoiding is very hard for me to do. I cannot avoid the way that I feel, and more importantly, I know that suppressing it doesn't work either. It no longer works for me - sometimes I wish it did. It was easier. I glance up at her across the table at some Thai restaurant where she'll call Chang Beer "the Chinese beer," and I will cringe slightly as the seemingly Thai waitress writes it down.
I feel terrible. This must be clear, this has to be clear and yet it isn't. She asks what I want to order and I stare down at where my stomach used to be. There's nothing there. I dare not mention how I feel. After all, I don't want to ruin the mood.