Q: My mom is waiting for me outside at the playground.
A:I know. I have to leave in 5 minutes too, let’s finish up.
(Focus boy, don’t you know the pleasure of a task well done?)
Q: Is your mom waiting for you?
A: No, I’m just going home.
(My mom is always with me now. No more waiting.)
Q: What about your mom? Don’t you have to do something for her?
A: I don’t have to do what she says anymore.
(Technically true. On the other hand I hear her voice at every turn.)
Q: Why not?
A: I just don’t
(25-year-olds don’t generally go home to their mom every night. Even if my mom were alive, she wouldn’t be waiting for me outside. Or maybe she would. Maybe I wouldn’t even be here.)
Q: What are you gonna do?
A: I have to meet someone to talk about something.
(I have to get tea with an 18-year-old whose father, a man I’ve known my whole life and who cared for my mother as she died, is dying. I want desperately to give him guidance, but what can I give him? I want to call him a friend, but I haven’t spoke to him in any meaningful way since he was 10 and I was 17. I’ll go there under the premise of decorating the vessel his father will be cremated in, really just wanting to talk and give him a hug.
Q: Oh. Okay let’s finish.
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