On The Town (Fate, Accomplice)

… : )

Hey, mom? What are you doing later?

I could almost hear the honey in her voice as I read the text.

This, dear friends, is not an open-ended question meant to ascertain a person's availability for a fun and frivolous after-work past-time.

Intuition (and experience) told me this was a trick. And it begged for an open-ended response.

"Why, what's up?"

Three dots pulsated again and then disappeared.

When the words finally appeared they offered nary a hint of specificity. 

"I was hoping you'd do something for me."

I imagined her voice as sharp Boston vowels tumbling from Ben Affleck's mouth: "I need your help. I can't tell you what it is, you can never ask me about it later, and we're gonna hurt some people."

I thought for a moment about forwarding my to-do list complete with appointments and meetings, making a particular notation of a closeted desire ... that one of my teenage progeny might gather up the dunes of laundry spreading through the house on the shifting winds of the season and put their grains where they belong.

I don't want to be the one doing the “sniff test.”

That, I know will happen someday, when they get houses and washers and children of their own. Today is not that day. Today she wants me to take her shopping. She has her own car ... her own money ... her own ideas about what she wants. Why is she asking me to be a part of it?

Is this a trick?

What can I offer? The past should inform her that her mother can only lay a wet blanket over the fire within. I can bring the admonition for spending too extravagantly. I have reached the age (unhappily) that the let-me-speak-to-your-manager vibe isn't as mortifying as it should be. Surely, she's not anywhere near ready to allow me to be the conduit between her youthful sensibilities and the desire to get a sale price.

She can't want me to talk her out of whatever skimpy thing shaped like clothes that her heart desires ... Or to make her think about the cost basis ratios … can she?

Dresser drawers? Washer? Trash? Maybe it's Trash, washer, dresser drawers ... The order of operations has always been quite flexible. 

I've been here before. Only I wasn't the mother then. 

Youth fashion hasn't changed all that much since I used to try and fit in. 

Time is so weird how it moves in fits and starts. How it weaves in and out. 

Time with her as I have experienced it ... the daily hum of music, song, arguments, hugs, laughter, tears, papers rustling, clothes thrown here and there, finger-pointing, eye-rolling, slammed doors, the occasional plate of warm cookies, and an explosive mess in the kitchen ... will freeze.

But it won't stand still. 

She will be three hours away, living her best life. And I will be waiting for those three pulsating dots to complete our connection.

For once, I won't say what I'm thinking. 

Instead, I respond with my best Jeremy Renner imitation: "Whose car are we gonna take?"