Tuesday, June 19, 2001

All growed up

Immediately after it happened, there was a long, vast silence. My mother and I both stood there, frozen on the steps. I looked into her eyes with the horrible realization that when she looked back at me, she no longer saw me as her little boy. I had just offered evidence to the contrary. I was now -- and irrevocably -- a man, and this prospect saddened her, a little bit or a great deal, I couldn't be sure. The moment passed like a hot, humid summer night: slowly and with no comfort whatsoever. But it passed, and we went about our task and we never, ever talked about it.

It was the Sunday afternoon before Memorial Day, I was 32 years old, and I had just said the f-word in front of my mother for the first time.

We had been moving redwood furniture from the basement to the patio, just two chairs, three small side tables and a chaise. This last was my undoing, since it required mom to take an end while I navigated the light but unwieldy lounger through the basement door and up the narrow concrete steps ascending to the surface. "Don't pull," I cautioned her before we began. "Just guide it up. I don't want to go too fast and have you fall over backward." My mother tut-tutted at my concern, but seeing my scowl and obvious concern for her safety agreed not to pull.

I hefted the chaise and began to maneuver it through the door, up one step. Two. Three.

And then she pulled.

She negotiated walking up the steps backward with aplomb. My mother was never in any real danger, except from the knowledge that at some unknown time between potty training and this day, her son had developed a sailor mouth. Her unexpected tug on the end of the chaise caused me, holding tightly to the other end, to lurch forward. There was the briefest of moments when my head and the concrete doorframe of the bunker-like basement tried to occupy the same space at the same time and failed.

The laws governing matter thus adhered to, I saw stars and, almost simultaneously, said "Fuck!!!"

There may have been four exclamation points. Perhaps five. Despite the rapidly rising goose egg on my noggin, I was coherent enough to hear the word carom off the other houses in our neighborhood and echo faintly for an instant or so before the silence began.

My mother's mouth described a small O-shape and we held each other's gaze -- mine likely slightly more unfocused -- for that long, long moment. I looked down, away, my head throbbing, my brain still vibrating within my skull, with both pain and horror at what I just had done. I gathered my breath, looked up and slurred, "Lesh try sat again."

Up and up we went, while I replayed the last minute in my possibly-concussion-addled mind: In the same situation, rapping her head, my mother would have uttered a quiet "Damnit." It was her curse of choice, infrequently invoked and almost dainty coming from her lips. My father would have been more colorful, likely letting loose with a "Hell's bells" or "son-of-a-bitch". I never heard anyone in my family use stronger language than that, and certainly not the f-word, which polite people such as I were raised to never say.

To her credit, my mother did not pull and the chaise emerged from the basement without further incident. She went inside to begin fixing supper. I went to the bathroom to dab the blood from my head and the tears from my eyes, crying just a little not for the pain but for losing the last vestige of my childlike innocence.

After supper, while we cleared the table, my mother said, "The patio stuff isn't holding up well. The basement is too wet. We should store it in the garage this year." She gave me a small smile.

"Yeah," I said. "That's probably a good idea."