"How are you, Mom?" I ask.
I've made a fire, I've made lemony lentil soup from Thug Kitchen. I've trained for an hour lifting a round 25 pound weight over my head as I lunged my way across the gym floor. I've done dead lifts, a variety of planks with and without twists, tricep dips, oblique twists, squats. I've pushed 450 pounds up into the air with my legs. I've walked/jogged 3.1 miles, made a smoothie with powdered whey and fruit. I've drunk water, ginger tea. My Blueprint Cleanse organic juices are lined up in my fridge. This is my fortress, these are my momentary assurances of power and invulnerability.
My mother's voice, frail today, makes me wilt like a yellowed celery stalk, my belly soften, my heart judder. No matter the weights lifted, the cleanses taken, I can't prevent the thought: What will I do without her? How will I survive?
"I was at this party," she says. "A big party, and I was trying to get home. Finally I found some people and I could leave, but it took about five hours."
Awhile ago, I would have tried to change the conversation's scope, the topic. Frightened, I would have said, "That was a dream, Mom. There was no party."
"Was it a nice party?" I ask. I can picture crowds of people in fancy dress milling about the grounds of her club. Couples sit together on a stone wall; beyond is the golf course. In the distance, a few stalwarts are heading in, bags slung over their shoulders. Early evening. Rosy sky.
"Well, it was, it was big and we all had to bring a little bit of money..."
"Oh, it sounds like a charity event," I say.
"Yes, it was, a good excuse for a party..."
The conversation is short today, no talk of the books I'm reading. We speak of the cold.
"Oh, yes, we've had a storm," Mom says. "Little clumps of snow."
Abruptly, she says, "When are you coming?"
"Next week," I say, thinking: After training, after lifting some more weights, when I'm strong.
"I love you, Dearie," Mom says.
"I love you, Mom, very, very much."
"Take good care of yourself," I say. "Stay bundled up."
*
