I remember being part of an event planning class at Emerson College. Around April we were working for the Boy and Girls Club of Rosarito, Mexico for a small class project and for my portion and as usual, I wanted to use the resources I always had with Spanish related projects: my mom. As per usual, I left the work I had to do for the last minute. This work was translating an advertisement the class created.
10:00pm me: “Hi mom, can I email you something to translate? It’s due tomorrow morning at 10 am and I would, but it’s so much and I want to be sure it’s right”.
Quite honestly, I could have translated it myself, but I was too lazy and it would have taken me longer. My mother absolutely knew this…
“Sure, but I’ll get you back”
I still think back to this moment, and many people describe the love their parents give them as one that is physically expressive, but I feel that my mom expressed her love to my brothers and I in non-conventional ways. This was that way. This story is also relevant as a couple days later, I received the call. The call no one ever wants to hear, or believes they heard it. There is no rewind button in life, so you just have to absorb the candid life presents us.
Since I was going to school in Boston at the time, shopping galore in Downtown Crossing was just a fun perk of being a resident. May of 2018, my mother and I had plans to attend the Premios Platino del Cine Iberoamericano in Mexico. This meant I had to get the dress to match the occasion. After my normal 4:00-5:45pm class, I decided to go shopping for an event dress. The memory plays in my head. I walked into Primark, and just began skimming through the racks of casual shirts. I knew I didn’t need any new shirts but they looked like I could change into an actual fashionable person. The Primark in Boston has multiple stories that are connected by an escalator that lives in the center of the square perimeter layout. I passed the escalator to continue my square sweep of the first floor, and when I turned the corner past the escalator, my mom called.
“Julia” She sounded really serious with a tone of fear and sadness.
“Oh hey mom! I was just shopping for an outfit for the Premios! How are you??”
“Julia, it’s your Dad and I. We are driving back from Columbia now* they found a recurrence. We are going to see more doctors for a second opinion”
*They would often call with this statement and finish with ‘My MRI was clean’ but this time didn’t feel that sentence would follow.
I walked out of Primark, a bit shocked, and a bit confused. I mean, it happened the first time and she was fine, doesn’t that mean this time was going to be the same? Like the fact that we don’t have a rewind button in real life, I almost forced one whichever way I could. So I called back.
“Hi, Mom, I know you said you would get me back for the Spanish homework—was this an April fools joke?”
“Julia, we wouldn’t joke about something this serious”
“Oh okay, I’m sorry. Please keep me posted. I love you. ”
The call was terribly awkward. Mostly because I called in disbelief and I would think my mom was capable of some sick form of humor from a simple homework cram. It was true.
I left Primark and walked in the cold Spring streets of Boston. The weird thing is I wanted to be more upset than I was. I wanted to cry on the steps of a public building and a stranger comes up to me and ask me what had happened. I feel like I imagined a whole telenovella playing out in my head. Somehow, many years later, when my life was normal, somehow that stranger that found me whether man or woman would be the connection to my slightly awkward charming husband. My mother would be at my wedding, and we would laugh about it. “Remember when that happened”. I have a lot of those moments. The whole scenario in my head. The whole, “Hey mom, remember when this happened. Wow, what a laugh”.
I didn’t cry on my walk to campus. I went back to go to a rehearsal. I also went back in hopes that other people knew. I always have been one to hope that other people could hold me, or tell me I would be okay. That they would know exactly what to say to me. To make me feel safe. I pretend to maintain a stature between ‘cute anxious mess’ and ‘strong female lead that can kick ass at the drop of a dime’ but the reality is, most of the time I want people to ask if I am okay. The deep reality is that even when I am, I still want people to check on me. Then again, I need to do more to my own friends. That’s selfish because even though I want everyone to know what to say to me at every moment, I have 0 idea what to say to other people.
One thing I realized much later throughout my process with my mother is you can’t expect people to read your mind. You think they do, or you think they will do for you what you would do for them, but that is not the reality. It is a harsh one, but it is your reality. Your friends and family could do something that you may not find the most soothing, but for someone else, they would kill for. Some people want to be coddled, some people want to be left alone. The scary part in the world is you truly never know what someone else wants unless they tell you. That’s the funny part about communication. Everyone is different. We all have different love languages they say. I guess the grass is really greener. Knowing that I could not just make myself cry, and that my scenario was far from what I would actually do in the streets of Boston, I began to text and call my friends. Tell them what happened.
From telling my friends, I had at least a decent end to my night. One of my best friends, Molly had lost her father 1-year prior. It was our sophomore year of college. The night I found out about my mom, she and I went to see Isle of Dogs. It was not going to take my mother’s inoperable recurrence away, but it would give me a 2 hour moment of peace to look at animated dogs speaking Japanese.
That my friend is the power of media. The power that no matter how good or terrible mood one can enter into, movies and television has an unmatchable ability to distract us from the pressing realities of life.
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