Phone rings...

The phone rings.  Its silent turmoil is staring me in the face with a ferocity that burns my stomach.  As I check the caller ID my mother’s face stares back at me.  This is odd.  She never calls me.  I answer with a level of enthusiasm that is only matched by its blatant despair. 

         “Am I eating?”
         “Sleeping OK?”
         “Is work going OK?”

These are the questions I field in our bi monthly conversations.  As we drift in and out of mindless babble we are kept awake only by our brain’s instinct of waiting to speak next.  I tell her a mindless story and as it dribbles out of my mouth I can sense her defeat. Her flowers are doing well.  Dad is fine.  The cats and dog are playful.

         “Are you a failure?”
         “What happened with the last girl?”
         “What are you doing with your life?”

These are the questions that don’t get asked in our circular exchanges.  Instead, these are the questions that burn in her mind.  I can smell them as she speaks.  They reek with the same intensity as a beer on her breath. 

I murmur something about needing to go:  laundry, favorite program, just busy.  It doesn’t matter.  She doesn’t care.  If my excuse isn’t feasible she will instinctively offer one up:  dad needs help, flowers need watering, coffee pot needs cleaning.  It doesn’t matter.  I don’t care.

As we slowly say our silent peace I feel relief, despair and agony in a cocktail of emotion that is stronger than it should be.  I wonder, to myself, what happened in our lives for it to come to this.  Instead, I realize, it is very simple.  It is not what happened but what has not happened.  It is heavy in her voice and even heavier in her actions.  I am a disappointment.  I am a liberal, a hippie, raucous, wild, untamable and brash.  I am everything they are not.  I drink heavily and indulge in taboo recreations with a wild recklessness that can be compared to driving drunk.  I am not successful, rich or on track. 

She is smart, educated, determined and down to earth.  She can not understand me.  I can not understand her.  Our lack of interest in each other is our only shared trait.  It is obvious from this exchange that indifference is a passed gene; maybe it is recessive or maybe it is dominant.  Either way it has spanned the transcendence of creation to contaminate my mind. 

         “Life is what you make it.”

She says this and hangs up.  No goodbye, talk to you next week, good luck or call me tomorrow.  She does not care.  She does not badger or harass.  I place the phone on the table.  Inside I am broken.  I am jaded.  I am.  Indifferent.