At Least They're Committed

Awake at 2:22 a.m., up at about 4, in the surgery prep room with your mom, Dez, at 5:30 a.m. The kind nurse prepping her says, “Do you want the implants?” Your mom and I are up too early, exhausted. I look at her and try to quickly and quietly interject . . . but she’s already reasoning, “I’m here to get them taken out?” meaning the plates in her wrist, then before I can intervene she draws her hands to her chest and mumbles, “Does it say that . . . ? No, they’re real.” And I start to laugh. The nurse says, “The metal plates, do you want to keep them,” and we all start to laugh and your mom says ‘yes’ she’ll make jewelry or whatever out of them — but we didn’t stop laughing.

Not when the anesthesiologist came in and “Cat in the Hat” was on TV, loud, and your mom was desperately trying to shut it off not only because she wanted to hear the anesthesiologist, but because it was embarrassing for “a grown woman to be watching Cat in the Hat.” She kept looking over at him and smiling and nodding, and when he looked down at the paperwork, she’d frantically start hitting buttons, making the volume rise and fall until, finally, mute.

Not when your mom mimicked the face your Uncle Dante makes when he trips down the stairs because he still refuses to walk them and certainly not when she demonstrated how your dad gets hypnotized by Dinosaur Trails, even when you’ve dozed off to sleep.

Your mom was a trooper through the surgery and after and when I drove her home you were so excited to see her. It was your first night away from each other. You were both so happy!

I came home, did some work, napped, read some on my trash novel and, of course, checked facebook. And ME had posted a meme that said, “Quotes on the Internet are not always accurate ~ Abraham Lincoln.” And I can’t stop laughing. My sides hurt, just like the Catch Phrase “vagina” incident and the “Jesus!” in the third “Scary Movie,” and maybe it is just because I’m exhausted, but damn, that is still effing funny.