I’m sitting at my desk at work. My cell rings and the screen lights up and says:
Mom cell
I let it go to voice mail. I’m not in the mood. Two seconds pass and my work line is ringing. It’s obvious that this too is going to be “Mom cell”. Once again, I let it go to voice mail. Twenty seconds later the message light on my phone lights up. I think about ignoring it but instead I decide to listen.
“Hi honey.” I can tell by the tone of her voice that there’s something going on. “Will you call me please, when you have a minute? I need to discuss something with you.”
The whole message is in that tone. That mom tone that you get when you might have done something to piss her off, or when she needs something, or when she has to tell you something that you might not want to hear. It’s not a tone of death or dying or tragedy – it’s not that tone. It’s just that mom saying you need to call me back tone. So I did.
“Hi.”
“Hi. Where are you?”
“I’m at work. I stepped away from my desk.” I lie. Clearly I’m not going to tell her that I didn’t really want to talk to her right now.
“Oh. Well, I have some not so great news.” Silence.
“Ok…” I say. Since she’s not giving me the news yet and there’s simply silence on the other end of the phone, I decide I should say something. So I say OK. I mean, how is one supposed to react to that? It’s a little difficult to react to the not so great news when you don’t know what the fuck it is.
“Everyone is ok. I’m ok. Dad is ok. Your sister is ok…” she begins. But before she can get any further, I cut her off.
“MOM! Just tell me what’s going on!” JESUS H. CHRIST! What the hell is wrong with you??? I’m naturally assuming that most things are right in the world at this moment in time. So what’s the point of filling me in on all the things that are fine in order to ultimately get to the thing that’s not. Is it for you? Because I don’t need fucking soothing since I DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON YET!!!!
“Your cousin is getting a divorce.”
Umm. OK. This does constitute some not so great news. However, this does NOT constitute running down a list of people that are fine. This is NOT worthy of setting up a tone of doom and dread. I feel badly for my cousin. No matter how much this may be the right thing in her life and no matter that it’s what she wanted, it still must be insanely difficult. I have lots of sympathy for her. But you’d think that this was happening to MY MOTHER.
I guess when you’re a Jew, a mother, and of my mom’s generation, everything that happens is somehow about you.
