the beginning of something longer.Oak Wood- Lindsey Johnson Oak ceilings. Oak walls. Oak floors. The sight was always worse around Christmas time, because I always felt like more of a family because of the dimness the walls rendered, and the whole log cabin, pancake syrup commercial feel, and all the people. Oak interior. What a joke. I never really hated my mom for good enough reason to ever tell anyone I did out loud, but I always thought it. Its funny though, because usually when people claim “I hate my mom,” it’s in the heat of some moment that is a complete hurricane of raging hormones, defense mechanisms, and that fucking human nature excuse. She was just the type of person that made someone hate them for the things they really couldn’t help like jetlag or her overwhelming sense of house decoration. So, when she died last weekend from a stroke, I made myself be there, her house, my old one, to meet and greet, prepare cheese and cold cuts, and to sit in her God-awful living room on her God-awful paisley loveseat and pretend to mourn someone’s death I never really cared about in the first place. Beautiful thing I find myself doing, detaching from her sofa (precisely her’s) and walking to the back of the house, to the bedroom on the left, my old bedroom (precisely mine). “The Brass Bedroom” we used to call it, which always made me feel wealthy, even though we weren’t even close to being. I plopped down on my bed and looked around. She hadn’t changed a thing after five and a half years. I noticed that stupid cage on my dresser, the lab rat I had for a year when I was 17 was gone of course, but Mom kept the cage. “Memories, dear!” she’d say. I used to lay there at night and listen to the transfer trucks passing by outside my window, and wonder where they were going. I knew their sound, so distinct, not like a car, but like a vehicle that meant business, full of purpose and destination. Then, I started crying. I just started wailing, taking her winter coats out of the closet and tossing them up in the air, letting them fall and doing it again. Those damn transfer trucks every night. She picked such a bad location to raise a family, right by the highway. She knew I’d hear them and they’d keep me up. She knew me. Please believe me; I never wanted to be this lonely. I was born in the year of The Grateful Dead. Mom gave birth to me during “Mexicali Blues” on day two of Woodstock ’68. My birth was punctual, but she just couldn’t pass up the opportunity of a strung-out Jerry Garcia. I was born there, with my not-yet father, Donnie, by her side, and group of five Deadheads on acid who assisted in bringing me into the world. The way mom tells it, the Dead made it easier for her. She was hardly thinking about me being born, because she was singing her heart out about “bottles” and “girls that are just fourteen” and “a damn good piece of the Mexicali Blues”. As interesting and cordial as that sounded when I was 6 or 7, I don’t like telling the story at 23. It just sounds regardless on her part, so I just tell people I was born in a hospital, and my parents were married and in love before. Even though the truth is, after my birth, they decided to tie the knot. I believe my adolescence must’ve been a joke to the both of them, because I never had the same experiences when I was young as anyone else did. I had toys like the next six year old, hair putty (sculpt beautiful do’s in seconds), a remote control “Senor Sandwich” (complete with rolling olive eyes and salami scent), and Ethel the Opera Lobster (the only singing toy that could shatter glass). I was sung to, every night, by my mother and father, until age eleven, the Jefferson Airplane classics, Dylan, The Beatles. And we went on family vacations every year to see my grandparents who lived two hours north, in Chesapeake, Virginia. I didn’t have a lot of friends then, I guess, but I just overheard kids my age were going to the zoo and playing with remote control cars, not sandwiches. On the day I realized I wasn’t like the rest of my 4th grade class, it was pink outside. The sky was swirled by dark pinks and light magentas and it was strangely warm. Whenever the weather started looking like that, Mom would always tell me, “Dear, it looks like a tornado. Listen out for the train sound.” And I’d say, “Momma, why is there going to be a tornado?” And she’d always reply, “When the sky looks like a strawberry field, baby, you’ve got to listen for the train.” I listened and listened for it that day, kept looking out the window during history time at school, but nothing ever happened, no trains, just a heartbreakingly vivid pink sky that I had come to hate. When I got home I told her. “ Momma, the sky looked like a storm today, pink, but nothing ever happened. Why did you tell me to listen for the train sound?” “Just in case. You should learn to listen to the uncertainties anyway, sweetie.” She grabbed my hand. “I’m sorry if I scared you.” “Tomorrow’s Show and Tell Day. I need to go look for something to bring,” was my reply. The next day to Show and Tell I brought my favorite Simon and Garfunkel record, the one Mom used to play for me when I couldn’t fall asleep, the one we always used to sing together, but didn’t anymore. I chose to play “Homeward Bound” for my class, because it was the first song I knew all the words to. Maybe I knew I shouldn’t have gone to school that day. Or maybe I knew I was the only kid my age listening to Simon and Garfunkel. Whatever it was, I had a feeling in the bottom of my stomach that felt like a kick, my intuition telling me “no”, but I had no other ideas, so I took it. While the music was playing for my classmates, I stood in front of them, like an entertainer beside the record player, my hands clasped together tightly underneath my stomach. Some kids in the back were snickering and hitting each others arms. Other kids had their heads down. I closed my eyes. I saw Mom and me, dancing around in the living room, circling around the couch, and singing. “Home, where my thought's escaping, Home, where my music's playing, Home, where my love lies waiting, silently for me.” I opened my eyes again. The kids were still laughing. “TURN IT OFF!” a kid with red hair and freckles shouted from the back of the room. So, I did. I took the record from the player, and stepped back to my seat on the first row. I didn’t talk to anyone for the rest of the day. For the rest of the week. Mom was cooking dinner in the kitchen when I got home. I laid the record down on the table and started to walk out. “Sweetie, how’d it go? They loved the song, didn’t they?” she asked, putting her hand on my shoulder. I brushed it off. “Nobody my age listens to Simon and Garfunkel. Everybody brought toys, Mom.” I started to feel warm tears develop in my eyes. One fell down my cheek. She hugged me. “Well, they just don’t know good stuff when they hear it. That’s all.” I tore away from her, and my voice rose from a whisper to an unyielding yell. “You did this to me!” She looked shocked. I’m sure I did too. When I was sixteen, my father left my mother for Shirlene, a 20-something waitress at Thirty-Second Street Diner. Every morning he’d wake up at 5:30 am, to go get coffee, before work at the department store, and come home two hours after he got off, saying, “Honey, sorry I missed dinner. Long day at work, needed some coffee.” Eventually Mom just started cooking for the two of us, when cooked dinner at all. The day he left, Mom was in the kitchen wearing a gray sweat shirt. I was sitting at the kitchen table. He came in and spoke to her. Shirlene was behind him. “Hey, we’re leaving. Here’s four hundred dollars.” “Okay.” She said, adjusting her sweatshirt. “Lay it on the table.” I looked at Shirlene. She appeared childlike, and kept pushing her lips out farther than her nose. She was wearing a lot of makeup, especially on her cheekbones, but she still looked beautiful. Her hair looked like strands of gold Christmas tree tinsel in the light. She smiled at me, and for some reason I smiled back at her. I looked at my mother to find she wasn’t crying or anything, just standing there, watching my father, pick up a couple of odd and end things that sat on the counter beside the stove; a spoon, a picture of me when I was four at the State Fair, and some loose change. My mom had wrinkles on her forehead, and hadn’t put on makeup or worn a dress in over a year. “Grace, I’m proud of you, kiddo.” He forced a smile. I could tell. I felt a grimace forming on my own face as I watched Dad and Shirlene walk out the back door. Mom just kept stirring mashed potatoes for the two of us, expressionless. “Mom! Aren’t you going to do something?” I cried. “Baby, listen to me.” She crouched down even though we were the same height. “Your dad is happier with Shirlene. Love comes and goes. There isn’t anything I can say to stop him. We’ll be fine, Grace, don’t worry about…” “You could’ve done something, tried a little harder, worn a little more makeup, stopped wearing you hair in that dirty ponytail? Shirlene tries.” “Shirlene is twenty-four.” She responded. My mother looked so ugly. She looked so tired. She stopped cooking dinner and went into the living room. She turned on the record player and started dancing around, waving her arms over her head, singing off-key, something about gypsies. She took her shoes off, and let her hair fall down her back. | 
