Milo and the Restart Button
Page 12
My dad is completely absorbed watching a baseball game on TV, but he mutes it as soon as I stand in front of his view. “We’re having a family meeting in the kitchen. Your presence is required.” And that’s all I say, though I do grab the remote and put the sound back on for him.
“Milo?” I hear him call after me.
“Kitchen. Ten minutes.” That’s all I say back.
I make some chocolate milk and lay out a plate of Oreos and am pretty much surprised they both actually show up.
“What’s up with you?” my sister says. She stands by the sink with her arms crossed. My dad unscrews an Oreo so he can scrape off the cream with his teeth. I had no idea grown-ups even knew about that.
“The floor is yours, Milo. Go for it.”
I start by saying, “Thanks for showing up at such short notice.” And then after my dad grabs three Oreos at once, I add, “Two cookies to a customer.”
“Hurry it up,” my sister says. “I’ve got stuff to do.”
By “stuff”, she means “nothing,” but I want this over with as fast as possible too, so I just blurt it all out.
“I want to have Mother’s Day.”
“Oh, please,” my sister moans.
My dad just picks cookie out of his teeth. The clock ticks and the TV tells us the baseball score from the living room, but we don’t speak. Finally, my dad shocks us all by saying, “I think that’s a great idea, Milo. A really great idea.”
And then my sister shrugs and says the most surprising thing yet. “Yeah, fine. What do you want?”
And with both of them in on the idea, I drop the bomb I’ve been carrying around inside me for a while.
“I want to bring Mom back to life.”
mother’s day
ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WA S A box in the attic. Sealed up with tons of tape, the box was banished and forgotten about and just sat there gathering dust in the darkness and the fog. But now my dad has climbed the shaky ladder and hands down the cardboard box that is surprisingly light to be holding so many heavy feelings.
Family pictures are going back on the wall, and even my sister helps slide a few of the old photos into the yard sale frames I bought. My dad holds the hammer and helps bang in picture hooks, but after doing two or three, he looks down at me and I’m afraid he’s just giving up or is remembering he’d rather be filling in the squares of his crossword puzzles. But that’s not the reason.
“I think you can take it from here, okay, Milo?”
And you know what? It is okay. Because he isn’t saying that so he can disappear. He is saying it so he can dig into the box of pictures that he now helps unpack. He’s keeping me company while I bring my mom back from the dead.
“Look, you and Mom making a snowman!” he says. “It was that huge storm . . . I took this one in my bathrobe.”
And then I hear music coming from the kitchen, and a few pots and pans bang and clang while I hammer nails in the wall, and soon the house fills with the smells of something cooking, and then my dad carries out a huge tray of plates and syrup and orange juice while my sister holds a steaming stack of blueberry pancakes. “I used the frozen blueberries, but still, I think they’ll taste okay.” My sister is actually smiling.
And that’s where we celebrate Mother’s Day – sitting on the floor against the wall in the living room. And for the first time in a long time, there’s noise and smells and pictures in the house, and in between bites of pancakes – where the blue berries taste great – I’m happy to be a family of three, remembering we once were four.
phantom smiles
SHE WAS—
A pirate
A princess
A dancer
A dreamer
A nurse
A magician
A chef
A friend
A hole I thought could never be filled
She is –
Alive again.
The pea-patch blanket drapes across the couch, so whenever we watch TV, she does too.
A silly apron hangs by the stove on a hook, watching over meals and offering silent cooking tips.
A crooked line of photographs hangs on walls that watch me walk by – her smile always there to remind me she is close even though she can’t be.
And by my bed the picture frame Sylvia gave me can barely contain the image of my mom and me reaching for the sky every single day.
Acknowledgements
TELLING MILO’S STORY WOULD’VE BEEN impossible if not for the friends and family members who have held me close over the years. Thank you all.
Thank you to the James Thurber House for their generous support and attic apartment, where I had time and space to finish writing and cartooning the book. Thanks to my agent, Jill Grinberg, for believing in my story from the start and for getting it into the hands of the amazing Liesa Abrams, who nurtured and guided me through the editing process with bottomless respect and encouragement. Art director extraordinaire Karin Paprocki embraced my squiggly lines and created the wonderful visual design of the book. Go Team Milo!
Finally, Milo would still be lost in the fog if not for the support and love of my wife, Kalie, and my son, Zach, who make every day complete.
A note from the author
I’VE BEEN MAKING UP STORIES SINCE I FELL out of a tree I wasn’t supposed to climb and needed a good excuse for my parents.
I grew up in Massachusetts, USA – on a dead-end street, with woods behind our house that went on forever. There was a monster in my basement. A swamp across the street. And a family with a car that seemed to run over every cat that dared to go outside.
Making things up was just something I always did. It was as natural as having to be home when the street lights came on. Even as a kid I found that telling stories was powerful - bullies, friends, teachers gave me space whenever I made stuff up that filled the gaps in my life that needed filling.
For me, that’s what writing is. It’s the mortar that holds all of life’s loose bricks together. I may not always build a perfect wall or a straight house or a story without holes, but getting messy trying to hold all the crazy pieces together makes it all worthwhile.
The first story I remember writing was in 5th grade. I didn’t mean to create a story. It just jumped out of me in response to an assignment to write an essay on our field trip to the Boston Museum of Science.
I didn’t know where to start. Sure the caveman diorama was cool. And the Lightning Show? That was pretty great. The problem was - all I could think about was how the toy alligator I’d bought at the museum gift shop had been taken from me by some big kids and later I found it just lying on the exhibition floor by the enormous globe.
A lightbulb went on. I wrote the entire essay from the point of view of that alligator, lost in the huge museum.
Of course I don’t still have those four pages. But I do remember it was the first time I got the recognition that I’d done something unexpected - used a creative approach to solve a problem. I felt the power words could have and I loved it.*
(*I loved it so much - two years later I wrote a science paper on photosynthesis from the point of view of the leaf.)
Thanks for reading Milo and the Restart Button – I hope you enjoyed it!
Alan Silberberg
A QUICK Q&A WITH
ALAN SILBERBERG
1) When did you realise you wanted to be an author?
I didn’t realise I wanted to write books until I was in my 40s after years of writing for different TV and film projects.
2) So when did you start writing?
I started writing in 5th grade when I created my own story based on a school field trip. After that I was always writing in journals or making up skits and stories in school and then college.
3) Where do you get your ideas from?
I am always staring at the world and many ideas come to me just by quietly watching people and wondering what’s going on with them. Other ideas seem to bubble up from inside me when I least exp
ect them to show up. I think when you are looking for ideas – that’s when they are hardest to find.
4) Why do you write for this age group?
This age group always reminds me of a time when the world seems wide open and anything is possible. It’s also that age when kids start to feel independent and begin to experience emotions on a deeper level. They also have no problem laughing at the funny stuff.
5) Did you have an alter-ego like Dabney St Claire when you were younger?
When I was younger I was already drawing cartoons so I think the doodles in my sketchbooks were my alter-ego.
6) Did you have to wear braces as a kid?
Yes I did and I will always remember the time I ate some really chewy candy (that I was not supposed to have) and my braces broke. The orthodontist was not happy about that!.
7) Do you collect things, like Hillary, or Milo?
I have a collection of old toys like robots and wind-ups and I have a collection of tiny plastic TV sets that have little pictures inside a viewfinder.
8) Are any of your friends people you weren’t sure about when you first met them, like Milo and Hillary?
I think friendship sometimes takes time to grow into something special. I guess, like Milo, I have always been a little cautious at first when I meet new people, but once I get past the initial insecure phase, I’m 100% there.
9) Who do you talk to when you are feeling sad?
When sad I talk to my wife or my good friends or cuddle up with our dog Zeus and talk to him.
10) What reminds you of your family when you are away from home?
Laughing always reminds me of the fun we have back home.
11) Are you a member of the Cool Name Club?
I think “Alan” is definitely a Cool Name Club name…but I’m not so sure about “Allen” or “Allan”.
12) And finally, what superpower would you like to have?
I’d like to have Microwave Vision so I could make popcorn with the blink of an eye!