I Am Not Seven
It is a Monday and my belly is bulging out. I want to drive myself home from Camp Mama. I am an adult. I get to do what I want to do. It’s my life. The sinus Dr. says it is unlikely that my sense of smell and taste will ever return. Although, he can’t say for sure I wept in his office while looking at my nose through a camera. The inside of my nose is very hairy. “That’s what keeps the dust away from our insides” the intern says. When she leaves the room I am weeping at the thought of never being able to taste again and then it turns into a prayer of gratitude for having all my fingers and toes and for being able to see and hear. Even when you feel you have lost so much, there is still so much to be grateful for. I am ready to drive myself home. Yes, it is risky business but that is the way life is. Time will tell. The end of my story has yet to arrive. When I just relax into the sofa my belly sticks out like I am pregnant. What is in there? If I go home tonight then I’ll be able to wake up in the morning and not scurry around in an effort to be on time for the bookkeeper. I can watch “Survivor” alone which is how I like to watch it best.
A large truck just drove through the “driveway” and battered one of mom’s trees. It is time for me to go home. I am entitled to go home if I want to. I am not a child. “I am not seven” I said the other day coming out of a deep sleep. I need someone else to take me to the hospital this week. I need some space from my parental unit. Nothing wrong with that and when I’m home I’ll do what I do, which is to write songs and talk on the phone and write about my day and listen to music and just be who I am. I was left alone a lot as a child so there it is. I want to go home. I don’t want to put on a happy face. No Ma’am. If this is the beginning of the end of my life, I want to live it the way I want to live it. I deserve to feel independent. I deserve not to feel so needy. I can take care of myself for awhile. Yes I can. No remorse, no regret, no guilt. Just the life and times of me, myself, and I. I want to drive by myself. I feel like a child who has to ask for permission to do anything. What is happening to me? I do not know. But at the end of the day, we are all, alone. I have had other mothers. I am who I am. My job right now is not to please someone else but to take care of my own, damn self. Where is my wallet? I could hear it through the silence.