“Your lights are on,” a woman raps harshly on my driver-side window. She is in thick black leather from head to toe.  She has short gray hair and the complexion of someone who has been in her share of dark bars--ruddy and riddled with broken blood vessels.

“They’re automatic, but thanks.”  I wave and force a smile. I know she is being helpful but I can’t help feeling annoyed.  The rap is harsh; she speaks and walks with a sense of entitlement. What I really want to do is flip her off.  But I don’t, because also in the car are my mother, riding shotgun; and my two children in back:  Sofia, three; and Ricky, one year old. Not a good example for either generation. Instead I wave and mutter bitch under my breath, too soft for anyone to hear.   

It is early Saturday morning.  The kids are still in their jammies.  I’m in my running outfit though I haven’t run yet. We are on a ferry going from Seattle to Whidbey Island, where my husband Juan and I have a weekend cabin. My father is already there, most likely running the pellet stove and picking dead potato bugs out of bathroom corners, and more than likely savoring the quiet without my mom.   

Juan will join us later.  At the moment he is still in our real house in Seattle, setting off ant bombs in our real kitchen.  Like Dad, he a compulsive putterer. Like me, he cultivates little childless moments when there is no ongoing prattle and you don’t have to watch the baby to make sure he doesn’t eat bits of stale macaroni from under the sofa.  

Our car is the first to board the ferry which feels like a special treat--even after five years of these weekend commutes. The down side is: no matter if you’re the first car in line, the motorcycles always get loaded first. Like today.  There are a half dozen parked in front of me on the car deck, including the one which holds the window-rapping woman.  Since there are so many, I think of them as Hell’s Angels, although when I look closer, I realize they aren’t.  Would professional toughs have such great accessories?  The helmets with the built-in headsets?  The coolers and panniers?  Let alone be in $1500 of outerwear, like the woman who rapped on my window?  No, these guys are weekenders like us.   

Inside the car, my mother is reading the paper.  In the back seat, Sofia provides a running commentary for current events. Her voice in punctuated by a series of excited shrieks. “Look, Mommy, the boat’s moving! There’s a seagull!  We’re floating on the water!”   

“Inside voice, honey,”  I call to her, and go back to my book.  

Baby Ricky grunts.  Without looking up, I hand him his blanket where it has fallen on the floor.  Some Mommy tasks you can do on autopilot.   

The ferry crossing is short--only fifteen minutes.  Sometimes we leave the car deck to admire the view of Puget Sound.  But not today.  Too cold and wet.  We stay in my SUV and tune out my daughter’s prattle and supply my son with whatever he asks for.   

Then the crossing is over and the bikers are back down from the main cabin, probably done drinking acidic coffee in Styrofoam cups.  They put on head-setted helmets, saddle up, and rev their motors.  I give them plenty of space before following them off the boat.  I know they’re probably not a gang, but I still don’t want to rear end anyone--especially someone who walks as tough as the rapping woman. Bad bad karma.  

Mom is reading the Seattle Times.  She has some choice words about the president, who she calls “W.” She reaches into her nylon bag and pulls out the crossword section, along with her asthma inhaler, which she shakes up and down.  She gives herself two puffs.  It makes a sound like a harmonica.   

Last year she spent a week in the hospital with a collapsed lung and a bad case on pneumonia.  And even though she recovered well and without surgery, there are residual effects.  The chronic asthma, for one.  The cataloguing of her worldly possessions, for another.  The lists of her things aren’t long--old china, moth-eaten afghans, Great Aunt Bessie’s costume jewelry.  

To all of us--my mom and dad and sisters and I--this hospital episode had the feel of a grim dress rehearsal. Sometimes before I close my eyes at night I think about what I’m going to say at her funeral.  I know it’s a morbid thing to do, but then again, so is divvying up cocktail rings she keeps in a bandaid box in a bathroom drawer.  

I’ve been rehearsing for five months now and so far I’ve only been able to come up with:  Mom was a difficult woman.  

My mother and I have never been easy around each other.  Since I’m now a mommy myself, I know that it’s unfair of me to focus on the fights and gloss the years of every-day care and empowerment.  Even so, lots of days it’s easier to talk about war than for her to tell me she thinks my kids eat too many snacks, or me to tell her to stop nagging Dad. 

“You’re too hard on me,” she always says.   

“No one can ever win an argument with you,” I say. “Do you know how hard it is, knowing I can never be right?”  

“What do you want me to do?”  she says. “My father didn’t raise any milquetoast.”  

******

We are driving down the one-lane highway which bisects our skinny island. The biker gang in front of us has spread out.  Four bikes have gone ahead.  There is still one motorcycle in front of us.  A man drives and a woman sits in back with her arms around him.  And then suddenly there’s a car in front of the bike, braking sharply to make a left turn.  The motorcycle brakes to avoid rear-ending him, but there isn’t enough space.  There is standing water on the highway. At first the motorcycle tilts backward and sideways, but it’s too going to fast; the momentum is too strong.  It flips and the two bikers are on the ground, skidding on their sides, one spooned around the other, going ten feet forward on the pavement.   

OK, I think.  Here’s where the accessories come in handy. They’re wearing helmets and expensive leather. They may need skin grafts and pins in their knees but this is still just a story.  

But the rider-less motorcycle is still behind them, in gear, and bearing down fast.  As my mother and I watch, it falls on top of them, forcing them face down.   

They’re still skidding, faces in the asphalt.  

At last they come to a stop.  Two people huddled together on the ground. They don’t get up.  

I finally breathe and look around me.  I find I’ve braked the car a safe distance behind the accident and pulled to the side of the road.  My hazards are on.  Now what?   

My mother speaks. “I have to go up there.”  

“Let’s give them space,”  I say.  

“No,”  Mom says.  “Point the car away from the guard rail so I can get out.  I can’t not go.”  

I do as I’m told; happy to have a task.  Three men rush past me, carrying cell phones.  Their voices are frantic.  I watch my mother go up to figures on the ground.  I see her take off her sweatshirt.  Then there is a throng and I can’t see any more.  I forage in the trunk for our roadside emergency kit, but when I open it there is only gauze and an ace bandage.  Another man runs past me with a similar kit.  They both look pitifully small.  

Five minutes have passed.  I don’t hear sirens.  

Up ahead I see someone has covered the couple with mylar.  I still don’t see my mother.  I want to go up as well but know that all I’ll be able to do is gawk.  Besides, my children are in the back. Now that we’re stopped moving they’re getting surly. They’ve been strapped in their car seats a long time.  I climb back into the driver’s side and wait.  

“Guh,”  says the baby.  I hand him a graham cracker.  

“Uh oh!”  screams my daughter.  “I’ve got a booboo!  Hey, I’m all right now!”  

What do I tell my daughter?  They’re fine, honey, just sleeping?  But that doesn’t feel right somehow.  I tell the truth.  It seems to me the one thing I can do. “I don’t think they’ll be all right, honey,”  I say quietly.  “And use your inside voice.”  

Finally there are sirens.  The road is blocked off with orange pylons.  A man in a black rubber suit and yellow helmet makes a circling motion with his finger.  Turn around.   

I would love to, but where is my mom?  

Then she’s coming back our way, wearing a thin turtleneck in the damp freezing air. Her sweatshirt is in her hand, crumbled into a ball so a large part of it isn’t showing.  

She gets in the passenger side.  I start the car and begin my U-turn.  One of the men with the cell phones directs me.   

“I’m cold,”  Mom says.  I turn on the seat warmers.  

“Someone said that the man was walking.  That it was just the woman who was injured.”  I’m looking for any blessings in this accident.  At the moment I don’t see any. The instant the bike came down on top of them and forced their faces into the pavement, this stopped being a story.  

“Yes, he’s walking. He’s bleeding from the forehead and he’s in shock.”  She shakes her head.   “They were all just standing there.  No one knew what to do.  Finally I asked someone to get me a knife so I could cut her helmet off.  I loosened her jacket.  It seemed like it was choking her.  Her legs were at an odd angle.  Someone wanted to straighten them out.  I yelled at them to leave her alone.”  

Mom is garrulous.  I would like to offer her something other than heat, but all I have is graham crackers.   

“At first she was unconscious.  Then she opened her eyes.  I could see how afraid she was.  I kept telling her that she was going to be OK.  But blood kept coming from her mouth. Big buckets full. I don’t think she’s going to make it.”  

I navigate the detour, creeping ten miles an hour under the speed limit. Behind me, the rest of the ferry traffic follows.  We are all going slow, a kind of gruesome accident cortege.   

“Her name is Cathy,”  Mom says after a bit.  “I think she’s the woman who told you about your lights on the ferry. That was so polite of her.”  

“Really? I thought it was obnoxious.”  I know even as it comes out of my mouth, it’s inappropriate.   I feel terrible for even thinking it, let alone saying it.  But Mom doesn’t yell.  

Then we’re at the cabin.  Dad is at the front door, wearing his work cords which are frayed at the knees. He’s smiling.  Happy to see his grandkids.  “Hello, hello!” he says.  

Mom yells at him to help her get Sofia out of the car.  Dad stays where he’s at.  His hearing isn’t so good.  Intentionally, I sometimes think. “Dick!”  Mom yells.  “Come help me with Sofia!”  

My father makes an exasperated noise.  “I’m coming, Barbara.  Geez.”  

I am carrying the baby, burying my nose in his no-more-tears hair. “Leegle,”  he says.  

“You’re right, honey, I forgot your ball.”  I go back to the car and produce it from between seat cushions, dusting off a layer of drool and graham crackers.  Even if this isn’t what he wanted, he acts as if it is, waving it up and down and trying to force it in my mouth.  

Inside the cabin, I make the baby’s bottle, thankful that Dad already has the pellet stove warming the house. I’m still shaking hard.  Mom isn’t any better.  She goes straight for the liquor cabinet.   

Sofia has found the blocks. She is fake-crying.  “I want to watch The Little Mermaid!” Even though it is too early for a full-blown video-fest, let alone a tumbler full of red wine like Mom has balanced on her knees, we relax the rules.    

“How about you?”  Mom says, shaking her tumbler.  “Do you want a drink?”  

“I’ve got my running clothes on,”  I say.  “If you can watch these guys for a few minutes I’d like to go out.”  

I don’t run very far.  Just a mile to two.  I stay away from main roads, keeping to gravel paths lined with goose poop and blackberry brambles.  I know statistically I’m in much less danger traffic-wise than I was an hour ago, but I still have to remind myself to breathe.  In one two three, out one two three.  It is cold enough that I can see my breath.  I am very very happy it’s not red.  

I think of my mother in front of that crowd, alternately barking orders and comforting a woman who is about to die, afraid and in pain, coughing up blood in the middle of the highway.  I was not as capable as Mom was. I did even less than the cell phone guys.  I am not the hero in this story, but I know who is.

I feel all my mother’s and my squabbles being scraped away like layers of flesh.  I am raw.  

We will bicker again.  But there will be other times when she’s the first person I call when I have important news. Ricky scored his first goal.  Sofia can count to twenty in Spanish. Juan’s been promoted. I ran a marathon. Or, more frequently:  Ricky’s got the flu. Sofia got finger paint on the sofa.   Juan would rather fumigate than spend an hour with us in the car.  I am always tired.  

I no longer feel the need to rehearse my mother’s funeral.  Whenever it comes it will be too soon.  No need to bring it down on me, rider-less and in gear, every night before I close my eyes. Besides, I finally have the words.  I know now that difficult can be another word for strong.  When that day comes I will not skulk in the front pew. I will stand up and say:  I loved my mother.  She was no milquetoast.  

Author's Biography

I live in Seattle, Washington, with my husband and two children.  I'm a graduate of the Bennington Writing Seminars.  

Another essay about my children is in the anthology "Toddler:  Real-Life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love", to be published by Seal Press this October.

Essay Reviews!

Want to read some? Or write some? Great! 
We need your input!

Site Reviews!

We'd like to know from our readers if they enjoy Seven Seas Magazine! Do you have praise or complaints? Suggestions or ideas? 
Would you like to read reviews by other readers? 
Please check out our Site Reviews Page

Get notified!

Would you like to get notified as soon as new Seven Seas issues are published on the Web?
Get notified!

Tell a friend!

Do you enjoy the Seven Seas site? 
Please tell a friend to stop by!
Tell a friend!

Go back to the table of contents
 of the current issue.

You just read essay # 4.  Read essay #

1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10