Every weekend I call my parents. I don’t necessarily enjoy doing that.
Our conversations are usually one sided, with my mom relentlessly gossiping about every person she knows. That’s on a good day. If she’s in one of her moods then it’ll go complaining about how none of her four daughters treat her right. Look at <insert some person’s name who I usually have no idea about> kids.
Today she’s complaining that her constant back pain is because she always had to carry me in her arms when I was little.
“Always,” she says with a definitive air about it. “Even while cooking. Or else you’d bring the roof down with your shrieks.”
Sure, drama queen, I think but bite my tongue. My mom hardly ever cooked for us back then.
“Everyone in our neighborhood loved my lasagna.”
It’s good she can’t see me. My eyes are rolling so far in my head I feel they might get stuck there.
“Mom, you have back pain because you don’t exercise. You have to build muscle strength”
“You look after a house with four kids and an absent minded husband and then tell me it’s not exercise. If anything it was all that over-exercise and then carrying you on top of that that broke my back”
There’s no winning this argument with her. The cynic in me thinks she’s making me feel bad so I can buy something nice for her for her birthday next month.
Continue reading
FictionFuture 