Story for the Week
Two weeks ago, I really wanted to yell at Corinne on the nearly 10-minute drive to school. Instead, I snipped at her, cried on the way home, started a load of laundry, and proceeded to have potato salad and a Diet Coke for breakfast…all before 7 a.m. If you can relate, you might be a mom.
I’m not taking anything away from dads and the bonds they have with their kids, but recently, Corinne and I have found ourselves in this weird space where we say exactly the same thing at exactly the same time in response to something. Every time it happens, we look at each other, and Corinne says, “We have to stop doing that.” I usually laugh because I think it’s kind of cool, and it makes me realize how similar and connected we are.
Back to the morning in question. It was a Monday, and it had been a scary and eventful weekend. We were too quickly approaching the first anniversary of losing Dennis to pancreatic cancer. We were six months out from suddenly losing my mom, and when that happened, Corinne had unwittingly said, “I can’t wait to see what the next six months brings!”
Well the next six months brought two pretty much back-to-back medical procedures for me (both with good results, thankfully) and a diagnosis of and surgery for thyroid cancer for her uncle. He was very weak and out of sorts when he came home (reminiscent of Dennis when he came home the last time), and the Sunday after his surgery, we ended up calling 911 to take him back to the hospital. He was fine. His potassium levels dropped low enough that his entire body started to cramp up, and he couldn’t move. But the diagnosis, the surgery, the weakness, the return to the hospital…all very emotional reminders of our lives a year ago.
So again…back to the morning in question. Corinne’s zero-hour class begins at 6:50, followed immediately by marching band practice before first period. This particular morning while she was eating breakfast and I was packing her lunch, she asked me where her PE uniform was. Now it took a while (and a lot of yelling over the years) for her to get used to emptying her lunch sack every day and making sure she puts it in the freezer to refreeze. The PE uniform is new since she hasn’t needed one since the middle of 8th grade, and this is her first one in high school. It was literally her first week having to bring it home.
I know she asked which pile to sort it into on Friday for the laundry (darks), and I know she washed the delicates (because I told her to do those first and I put them in the dryer myself). Did the darks get washed? No. She’s lucky that they’re not required to change for PE this year, or she would have been borrowing a uniform (for a fee) or losing points for not being dressed for PE. By the time she was brushing her teeth and I was gritting mine, she got a mini lecture to the effect that the PE uniform comes out of her backpack as soon as she gets home every Friday, and that load of laundry gets started right away so the clean uniform can go right into her backpack.
When we left for school, we were later than we should have been, and on the way, she asked, “Is my flip folder (for band) in my backpack?” I glared at her because, no, it wasn’t. (She told me later that she knew it wasn’t and had been afraid to ask.) I replied, “You need that for marching band, don’t you?”
I have mentioned before that I am not a morning person. Corinne has to be at school at 6:50, but I don’t start work until about 8:30, and I work from home. My typical mornings include dropping her off and then going home to take a 1.5-hour nap 😴. While my inner rage (and I do mean rage 😡) wanted to just let loose and scream at her all the way to school, I didn’t.
I did scold (berate?) her about being responsible for getting ready quickly enough to make sure everything is in her backpack and the fact that I was really freakin’ tired and now had to come back with her flip folder and wouldn’t be able to go back to bed. Marching band starts at 7:45, and no matter how tired I am, two half-hour naps with a drive to school in between just aren’t going to cut it. As we were pulling into the drop-off line, she told me where to meet her with the flip folder, and I just said very shortly, “Yeah. I know.”
She admitted that evening after dinner, when we were all laughing and joking about things, that she ended up not needing her flip folder until the last five minutes of marching band. I probably could have brought it to her at about 8:20, just so she would have it for her actual band class. After she told me that, she made a pretty quick exit to her room to finish her homework. Smart kid.
Now I’m sure some of you will think that I should have let her go without her flip folder…consequences and all that. If we had had a different year and a different weekend, I might agree with you. There have been a couple of times she has forgotten her AirPods, and I tell her it’s her choice whether she goes without them for the day or we go back to get them and she takes the tardy. She is old enough to choose the consequences. In regard to academics, I’m a little more inclined to help her out because she is an excellent student and could lose points for not having her flip folder for band, and we had a really crappy Sunday that weekend after a really crappy year. She has definitely gotten more “passes” than usual this year, and I’m ok with that.
I don’t know if that makes me a supportive mom or an enabling mom. Maybe a little bit of both. She has gotten the lecture before about how my mom didn’t even have to get out of bed in the morning when I was in high school. I got up, got ready, packed my own lunch, and got out the door to the bus. And I really wanted to give her that lecture again that particular morning. But she hasn’t heard it since we lost her dad, and even though I wanted to, I deliberately chose not to. Instead, I cried on the way home because I was so angry and overwhelmed and exhausted.
It might be time to go back to therapy.
There’s a book by Emily Carpenter with a definite mother/daughter bond theme to it. It is a five-star thriller and totally worth the read.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
5 Stars for Until the Day I Die by Emily Carpenter
348 pages
Publisher: Lake Union Publishers
Publication Date: March 12, 2019
I originally received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Lake Union Publishers.
Publisher’s Description
If there’s a healthy way to grieve, Erin Gaines hasn’t found it. After her husband’s sudden death, the runaway success of the tech company they built with their best friends has become overwhelming. Her nerves are frayed, she’s disengaged, and her frustrated daughter, Shorie, is pulling away from her. Maybe Erin’s friends and family are right. Maybe a few weeks at a spa resort in the Caribbean islands is just what she needs to hit the reset button…
Shorie is not only worried about her mother’s mental state but also for the future of her parents’ company. Especially when she begins to suspect that not all of Erin’s colleagues can be trusted. It seems someone is spinning an intricate web of deception―the foundation for a conspiracy that is putting everything, and everyone she loves, at risk. And she may be the only one who can stop it.
Now, thousands of miles away in a remote, and oftentimes menacing, tropical jungle, Erin is beginning to have similar fears. Things at the resort aren’t exactly how the brochure described, and unless she’s losing her mind, Erin’s pretty sure she wasn’t sent there to recover―she was sent to disappear.
************
Until the Day I Die by Emily Carpenter is a fast-paced thriller that will keep you guessing and second-guessing!
Erin & Perry and Sabine & Ben met in college, and after starting their careers, they joined together as partners to build a tech company that has taken off and has millions of users. After Perry’s unexpected death in a car accident, while his and Erin’s daughter Shorie is preparing to head off to college (even though she would rather skip college and work for the company). Erin has a breakdown. Her friends and family stage an intervention and send her off to a private Caribbean resort that specializes in “restoration.” But what kind of restoration are they talking about? And can Shorie really leave the company behind when she discovers an unusual message in the error logs?
You will want to keep reading this to get to the end! The story moves fast, and I kept trying to figure out who was behind everything. At one point, I literally gasped…out loud…because I did NOT expect THAT! Put this one on your must-read list.
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