I’ve watched kids getting their foreheads kissed and kids being yelled at inside their cars, and every time I wish I were the kid who still had the mom, no matter how mean or sad or angry she might be. That mom is better than no mom, though my mom is who I miss most.
“Good morning,” I say to my sister, who is almost as shocked as I am that I am standing at the foot of her bed at one o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. “Family meeting. Ten minutes.” And I walk out before she can start in on me. I mean business.
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 on 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 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 WAS 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 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 blueberries 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.
Acknowledgments
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 in 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.
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