Samantha, November 12, 2007

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Parents can get so crazy, they don't even know what they're doing sometimes, they don't listen to anyone, if they don't have a job, that's the worst. Just think about it, I mean if you're a like a kid you've got school to go to, but if you're a Mom and you don't have a job and your last job paid you like a whole year's salary just to go away, then there's no place you have to go where you have to act normal, so you can just stay home and be as crazy as you want and only your kid can see you. I asked my Mom, so when are you going to start looking for a job, and she said she had been working seven days a week at the center since before I was born, she was even signing papers with one hand and holding me on her breast with the other, Mom! I said, but she wouldn't stop, she was still in the hospital, she said, waiting for her milk to come, that's how devoted she had been to the center, and what she needed now was to get in touch with other things in her life, and I'm like okay, whatever, go be a yoga mom, I didn't really say that out loud. So then this morning I'm eating my breakfast like normal and she comes in and makes a big deal of cutting the grapefruit for me and then she starts carving out the little pieces with this weird little knife I'd never seen before, and I'm like Mom, what are you doing, I just dig it out with the spoon, and she said this was the way her mother did it for her, couldn't she do something nice for her daughter once in a while, and then she sprinked brown sugar on both halves of the grapefruit, smashing the clumps with her fingers which is so totally gross and she put each half on a little plate and set a spoon beside it like it was some kind of fancy dish from a chef show on TV, and then handed one of the dishes to me with like a total crazy person's smile. And I'm like, I can't eat that I don't eat sugar, and she said, what do you mean you don't eat sugar, don't you eat candy with your friends, and I'm like no, Mom, no I don't and she said fine, and threw both halves of the grapefruit in the garbage one after another, and walked out of the kitchen. So I put the stupid little plates and the stupid little knife in the dishwasher and I ate my toast and read a few more pages of my book, and then she came back in the kitchen with the phone in her hand and said she had just called my school and told them I wouldn't be coming in today, and I'm like what do you mean, my group is doing a presentation today, and she said, it's okay, I've got it all taken care of, but I'm like Mom! we're doing the rivers of North America, and ours is the Red River, the only one that flows north, but she said it's about time I let some of the other kids do the work, because today we're going for a drive in the country, just the two of us.