by Jenny Mollen
As I handed the gray-haired sales associate my credit card, I glanced shamefully around the showroom. I saw a sea of status whores of varying ages, snapping pictures of themselves in enamel bangles and large leather totes.
“This is such an elegant indulgence,” the woman said as she folded an equestrian-themed purple scarf into a perfect square, then placed it delicately in a sizable bright orange box. “You’ll have it forever!” I watched her as she robotically looked at my credit card, trying to guess what I did for a living.
I eyed the receipt, then pulled my hair proudly into a defiant bun and shrugged.
“Well,” I said, “you’re only fifty once.”
3
NILF
After six straight hours of breast-feeding Sid up and down the aisle of the Airbus A330, my legs were aching and my boobs were as deflated as the oxygen masks in the compartments overhead. From my spot near the lavatories, I could see Jason, who was sleeping helpfully with his face against his tray table. I hoisted Sid up to see his dad’s impressive drooling and felt a twinge of something in my right knee.
I’d booked this trip to Hawaii for the three of us earlier that week when it dawned on me that Debora was planning her escape from my life. We’d reached the end of our contracted time together, and by the weekend, she would be moved into a new house with a new Sid and a new set of lactating areolae. For the first time since having a baby, I was going to be on my own.
The vacation was planned a bit impulsively. I generally liked to take my time planning getaways. Unless, of course, I was on Ambien. When Jason and I first got together I remember plenty of times we’d get a knock on the door at six in the morning and a car service would be waiting in the driveway to whisk us off to God knows where. But those days were behind us, mainly because Jason asked me to hide his Ambien prescription from him and I’d forgotten where I’d put it. But I couldn’t blame this trip on drugs. (I was still breast-feeding, after all.) This trip was motivated by something stronger. Debora had left our house on a Saturday morning, after living with us for four months, and, crazy or not, I’d grown attached to her. I was comforted by her Black Christian TV shows and exaggerated nursing credentials. I felt safe and protected knowing that whatever happened, I had a self-proclaimed expert on hand twenty-four/seven. Debora’s departure signaled the beginning of a new chapter. I was officially somebody’s mom, with no role model of my own. I felt like I’d been given the keys to a shiny new sports car, but only because I lied about knowing how to drive a stick. I didn’t fucking know how to drive a stick. And I certainly didn’t know how to take care of a baby. So I acted without thinking. By Monday, Jason, Sid, and I were on a flight bound for Honolulu to see the only person who knew less about children than I did: my mom.
On an intellectual level I knew visiting my mom was a dicey idea. Her lack of maternal instinct was exactly why I’d hired Debora in the first place. That and the fact that I couldn’t handle listening to her remind me that in some circles she was now considered a NILF, a “Nana I’d Like to Fuck.” But I was petrified, and whether it’s healthy or not, primal fear has this uncanny way of driving all of us back to our mothers (even if they’re fucking batshit). Despite the years I’d spent being dumped with babysitters, being dumped with my father, and being told she’d never live her life for her kids, I was still hoping that now that she was older, retired, and less fuckable, my mom might see the error of her ways and want to be close to me. Or, if nothing else, I figured we could at least have a few laughs and share a few heartfelt moments the way moms and daughters do in tampon commercials.
From the aisle I looked over at Jason, who was leaning back against his seat now, gently snoring. Jason had been a huge help these past couple months, but he, too, was new to parenthood and slightly too neurotic to instill in me the sense of calm I was looking for. Wrong or right, I needed my mom. So I convinced him to fly to Hawaii by telling him the lie that all new parents hope is true, that parenting is easier on a beach.
For the past five years, my mom and her husband, John, had owned a timeshare on the island of Lanai. According to Wikipedia, Lanai, sometimes referred to as the Pineapple Island, is the sixth largest of the Hawaiian Islands. In other words, it’s basically the smallest. I think there might be one or two smaller, but I’m pretty sure they’re just inhabited by tropical birds and Lilliputians. Not only was Lanai ideal for rest and relaxation, it was also just small enough to provide my mom with little else to do besides focus on me.
When we landed in Honolulu, Jason gathered up our explosion of belongings and I carried our bloated baby off the plane. Equal parts exhausted and relieved, we made our way through the humid outdoor airport to a smaller terminal, where a prop plane was already waiting for us. We hurriedly boarded the vessel bound for Lanai, eager to reunite with someone on the other side whose arms weren’t about to fall off from holding an infant. I felt slightly embarrassed that I’d started to consider a seventeen-pound baby heavy. My college computer weighed more. But I’d recently injured my leg at the gym and the additional weight was taking its toll. When we stood up to disembark our Island Air flight into Lanai Airport, I was limping. As I hobbled through the tiny airport’s provisional baggage claim area, my mom and her dog came bounding toward me.
What I’d overlooked in my haste to connect with my mother was one small roadblock: a twelve-pound black-and-white party poodle named Rocky.
Part of becoming an adult means coming to terms with the fact that your mother’s dog is living the childhood you always wanted. It’s not his fault; he just lucked out and met her in a more enlightened time. She was finally ready for responsibility. She’d had a few trial runs (with me and my sister), killed a few plants, and was at last open to the idea of constantly feeding and watering and wiping someone’s ass with baby wipes. Rocky was living the childhood I always wanted. He had my mom’s undivided love and attention; they were rarely apart. Unlike Teets, Rocky was a poodle with a pedigree. Both his parents were show dogs, and he was engineered on a breeding ranch in Texas to be the ultimate specimen. To me, Rocky always looked like Michael Jackson wearing eyeliner. They had the same nub of a nose and uneven two-toned skin color. It didn’t matter to Rocky if he was black or white, because he was both simultaneously. His legs were atypically long for his body, so every time he moved he looked like he was reenacting the “Thriller” video. Rocky was sweet, but my mom’s coddling had made him into one of those high-maintenance basket-case dogs who eat only chopped chicken salad, refuse to set foot on wet grass, and travel with their own body pillow. Part of me hated Rocky and the other part of me respected the fuck out of him. What was he doing that I wasn’t? What did he understand that I couldn’t? I wanted to study his moves, learn his strategies, and then eventually usurp him.
As soon as my mom saw Sid, she pulled out her iPhone and started snapping pictures.
“What’s up with your leg, Choppy? Why are you walking like a pirate?”
My mom had called me Choppy since she’d accidentally guillotined my ring finger in a sliding minivan door when I was eight. “Choppy” didn’t refer to the act of trying to cut off my finger, but to “Chop-chop, Jenny,” because she felt the entire debacle could have been prevented if I had been moving faster. When her then husband, an orthopedic surgeon named Stew, attempted to sew the top of my finger back to the base, the nurse asked him what kind of dressing he wanted. I yelled, “Ranch, please.” The operating room erupted in laughter. It was in that moment that I decided my childhood pain could be cured only by endless approval from strangers.
“I don’t know. I think my body is just still messed up from pregnancy,” I lied. The truth was, I knew exactly why I was walking like a pirate. I’d started working out again. And instead of easing my way back in like a normal person, I’d taken to running my ass off on the treadmill like I was going through a messy divorce. I knew getting back to my fighting weight was going to take time and I had every intention of being patient with myself.
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sp; That was until I looked in a full-length mirror. My hips were wider than they’d ever been, my face looked like I’d gotten stung by a hive of bees, and there was a bulge under my C-section scar that had me convinced my doctor forgot a pair of forceps inside me. I didn’t recognize myself. Growing to term had been such a slow process that I’d had time to wrap my head around the idea of wearing bigger jeans and not seeing my vagina. But the transformation from adorably healthy pregnant lady to non-pregnant sloth-monster was overnight. As a society, we grant expectant mothers leniency. We celebrate them and encourage them to flaunt their ripened bellies in bodycon bandage dresses. Up until the second their child hits fresh air. Then, instantly, we turn on them. We judge them. We diminish them. We demand they pull themselves back together, because just looking at them makes us feel hopeless and undesirable.
I tried to accept my new body with grace and confidence, outwardly, while internally shaming myself and struggling to get back to normal. Sometimes at night, I’d stand in the shower feeling like I was wearing seven-millimeter neoprene. My abdomen was still numb and from the side it looked like a mini continental shelf, dropping off sharply just below the bikini line. After a C-section, doctors suggest waiting sixteen weeks before engaging in physically strenuous activities. I was proud of myself for only waiting eight. I would walk into Barry’s Bootcamp, loudly tell my instructor to go easy on me because I’d just had a baby, and then haul ass next to whatever physically fit person was on the treadmill next to me. On days when I was feeling particularly rotund, I’d age Sid down to make my waistline look more impressive. With each week I shaved off his age, five pounds of expectation was lifted off my ass. In retrospect, I feel ridiculous for lying, but not enough to not do it again if I had a second kid or a thyroid problem.
My mom and John helped with our luggage while I hobbled to the backseat of their Jeep and strapped Sid in.
“You said you were going easy at the gym,” Jason said to me sternly once we were alone in the car.
“I am.”
“You are what?” my mom said, hopping in the front seat with Rocky and scrolling through her new pics.
“Happy to be here.” I smiled.
“Good! Some Moc time was way overdue!” My mom had taken to calling herself the Moc after my sister made her an Instagram account with the name watermoccasin25. She decided on “watermoccasin” because my mom was a water sign born in the Chinese year of the snake and the water moccasin was the only venomous water snake she could think of. Curiously, my mom took no offense—except just for a minute, after she learned that the water moc has large jowls due to its venom glands. Once she was assured that the nickname wasn’t a knock against her looks, she embraced it with enthusiasm. Calling her the Moc was sometimes easier than calling her Mom because it encapsulated the duality of emotions I had toward her. A water moccasin is a fun-time pit viper who enjoys lounging on the beach, skinny-dipping in lakes, and vanishing as soon as its kids are born. Though aggressive only if provoked, a water moc bite could lead to permanent muscle damage, internal bleeding, loss of an extremity, or death.
The five of us headed down the manicured main road lined with Cook Island pines to Manele Bay.
“Don’t worry, Sid, I’m deleting all the angles where you look like a total fatso,” my mom called over her shoulder.
I looked at Jason. After six years of marriage, he still couldn’t help but register shock at the Moc’s candor.
“And you wonder why you had an eating disorder,” he said under his breath.
When we arrived at the condo, my mom walked us through all the changes she’d made since our last visit. She pointed out the refurbished teak lawn chairs, the marble countertops, and Rocky’s custom canopy bed. The bed stopped me in my tracks. I’d always wanted one as a kid, though I’m not sure I’d ever shared that information with my mom, as I was living full-time with my father by the time I was of canopy-bed age.
When my sister and I were eleven and twelve, my mom suggested we leave San Diego and move to Arizona to live with my dad because she didn’t think she could handle us anymore. Though devastating at the time, I channeled my feelings of rejection into more productive pursuits, like becoming my dad’s girlfriend. By my twenties it was something I could talk about rationally with my therapist (when I wasn’t talking about being my dad’s girlfriend), self-diagnosing my abandonment issues with an eye-roll and a dismissive laugh. I felt nothing about it because, I told myself, I felt nothing about her.
But I couldn’t deny feeling a sting as I locked eyes with Rocky. He probably had the scooter I always wanted, too—and the hot-pink Rollerblades, and the giant lips phone, and the beeper with the clear case. I squeezed Sid’s little body like a Capri Sun and walked into the guest bedroom to drink him in, opting out of the tour.
“Choppy! Wait up! This is the best part,” she said, like a little kid about to attempt a stunt on the monkey bars. Jason continued without me. My mom was too engrossed in her sconces to notice.
“Sconces can really make or break a room,” I heard her say through the wall.
The Moc was always renovating whatever place she currently called home. At least once every six months I’d get an e-mail with pictures of new backsplashes for her kitchen, new tiles for her shower. Each time, she’d become utterly engrossed in the process. And yet, once it was done, she’d inevitably find a reason to shed her skin and move somewhere else. As a child, we moved every year, sometimes to a different state, sometimes just down the block. For as long as I’d known her, my mom’s environment was in flux. And in her younger years, this included the players in it. Both as a homeowner and as a woman, she was restless and fickle. She could be the adoring doting parent one minute and a total stranger the next.
I recognize some of the same instincts in myself. Like her, I too have a track record of cutting relationships short, keeping people at arm’s length, trying to outrun my own vulnerability. I understand the impulse, but I was determined to break the pattern. No matter how uncomfortable motherhood made me, the only running I planned to do was on the treadmill.
I sat down to take some of the pressure off my throbbing leg when my mom and Jason entered.
“What do you think?” my mom said, holding up the corner of her new teal bedspread. “I might have been too jazzed on Sudafed when I chose the color.”
“Love it,” I lied.
“It’s maybe a little bright,” Jason said, “but—”
My mom’s face started to fall and I stopped Jason before he could finish.
“No, baby. It’s perfect.”
Like judging one of my mom’s boyfriends as a kid, weighing in on her decorating was pointless and would only hurt her feelings. I found it easier to just smile and wait for things to change.
Later that night, I tucked Sid into his travel crib before collapsing on the teal bedspread I knew would be fuchsia by Christmas.
Jason rubbed my back, encouraging me to stay positive about the trip. He listed all of our favorite dive sites on the island and talked about how thrilled he was to test out his new scuba gear. I knew full well he’d probably end up impulse-buying some other shit he’d never use as soon as he wandered into the next dive shop.
For all my mixed feelings about my mother, I too was grateful to be in such a beautiful place, even if my bed didn’t have a canopy.
I knew something was wrong when Sid started crying around 3 a.m. and I couldn’t stand up to get him.
“Baby,” I said to Jason, who was sound asleep next to me. “I can’t put pressure on my leg. Something is wrong.”
Jason flipped on the matching teal bedside lamp. “What do you mean?”
“I honestly don’t know. It’s too swollen to walk on.”
Jason told me to stay put while he went to check on Sid. When he came back, Sid was in his arms with a hungry smirk on his face. He smacked his lips and latched onto me without opening his eyes. Jason, meanwhile, bent my leg up and down like a physical therapist.
“Does this hurt?”
“No,” I said.
“How about this?” he asked, tapping on my patella.
“It’s only when I stand,” I explained tearily.
Jason waited for Sid to finish feeding, then changed his diaper and placed him back in his crib. Watching Sid float away in Jason’s arms while I sat glued to the bed, I felt powerless and incompetent and like a human gas pump.
I woke up earlier than usual the next morning because of the time change. To my surprise, Sid and Jason were both still sleeping. I tested my leg and, sensing that it hadn’t improved, I rolled off the bed and crawled on my hands and knees along the marble floor toward the bathroom.
Before I could get there, my mom stopped me.
“Chop? What are you doing?” She had a cup of coffee in one hand and Rocky in the other.
“My leg is really fucked up. I seriously can’t walk on it.”
My mom cocked her head at me like someone looking at a Sudoku puzzle for the first time.
“How are you gonna dive with one leg? I guess we can just throw you in and strap your tanks on once you’re in the water.”
Though I might have preferred a little concern, I had to admire her ability to make the best of a situation. She was always telling me to “buck up,” to “get over it.” When I was sick or injured as a child, she always found ways to keep the party going. She created portable ice headbands for dental work, started at-home IVs for menstrual cramps, and was never without a full prescription of Percocet. In some ways, the fact that my mom was a nurse was amazingly convenient. And in other ways, it was really fucking annoying. Having a parent in the medical field means never really getting any sympathy unless you’re dying of AIDS. “Oh, your stomach hurts? Well, at least you aren’t dying of AIDS.” “You pulled a muscle in your groin? That sucks. But you know what sucks more? AIDS.” This isn’t to excuse her lack of empathy, but there is a certain desensitization that comes with seeing real illness on a daily basis. By comparison, my ailments were minor.