Since the beginning of my relationship with my son I have always
been the parent, where as he has been, well, the child. He pooped, I wiped. He
fell, I caught. He half-slept, I cried. Mom is the big kid. Small kid is the
smaller kid.
Now, as we contemplate shaking up our lives and moving out
of our tried and true apartment of crooked dreams, we have clearly changed
places. While my kiddo discusses backyard flag football games and new puppy
ownership potential with perfect diction and professional poise, I am now the
drooling, indecisive one who wants everything I see and then refuses to try
something new. Sure a yard and a quiet life would be great but I’ll miss the
angry homeless pair of pants disguised as a man who uses our cement walkway as
his personal, private poop deck.
Okay, our current corner is as loud as a Vegas poolside gang
rape but I cry when I think of the muted songs of silence in the suburbs and
really being able to hear myself think. Sure, our sidewalks and building and
parking meters and gutters are slathered in dirty tears and broken dreams of
every Tom, Dick and hand job that got off the bus and fell face forward. But
that gives it grit and edge and a coolness factor and who wants to change that
up, right? Who really needs a $16 drink muddled by an under-educated mixologist
who looks like a series regular on Storage Wars when you can have bottled
margarita mix and a some slice of sanity?
I remember in the 70’s when my mother decided that white
bread was the devil and wheat bread would be our newly adopted, dark brown carbohydrate
child, my father, a man who hates change as much as Kim Kardashian hates white
dudes reacted as any small, hot-tempered, Brazilian man would. He yelled in
three languages, complained that the new cardboard disguised as toast left cuts
on the roof of his delicate, mango-loving mouth and defiantly bought French
baguettes when my mother wasn’t looking.
When she changed his coffee filter brand, fire shot out of
his nostrils. When his beloved super 70’s Yardley cologne for men was
discontinued my father added water to his last, empty bottle and forced us to
take repeated whiffs of his face and tell him it his cheeks smelled like
springtime.
When The Gap stopped carrying his favorite pinstriped,
oxford, button-down shirts in size extra small, he had to resign himself to
wearing only the seven he had, twice a week, instead of the requisite six days until
they all frayed and were turned into cleaning rags. And when The Gap starting
calling itself The Gap instead of Gap, my father’s brain melted out of his ears
and onto his last good pinstriped, button down oxford and well, you see where
this goes.
Apparently I hate change as much as my stuck-in-the-mud
Daddy-O and am trying my hardest to go with the flow and expand my horizons.
Will we move this month or next? Can we find a house that feels just like a
home and not like a crazy shack of nut bag dreams? Am I ready to grow up and
get out of the hairy molasses pie hole I have sat ass first in for the last
twenty years?
What if I am petrified not to be in the familiar
surroundings of my cracked crib I have grown so accustomed to complaining about?
What if I hate being away from the dirty streets of Hollywood and miss the
smell of urine and rotting trash jizz on my ballet flats on street cleaning day?
What if they don’t have any hipsters where we move and no one, not even the
Trader Joe’s employee-of-the-month, wears skinny jeans, a lopsided and very
regrettable Betty Boop tattoo or a sweat-stained fedora?
Or what if I love it and become…soft? What if I start
wearing jeggings and discounted Stella and Dot jewelry? What if I start a
Jazzercise franchise and drink Pinot Noir from a box? What if I proudly display
a pink and light green bumper sticker that reads, “My other car is a Beanie
Baby” on a car that I own?
Only time, good credit and topnotch school districts will
tell.
