Mom Just Called To Make Sure You're Not Under That Dangling Crane http://t.co/R6ctjwx9 #Sandy
— The Onion (@TheOnion) October 30, 2012
Leave it to The Onion. I’m sure everyone can relate to this in some way, but my mom was particularly neurotic about this sort of thing. (She died just a few weeks ago, in case this is the first thing you’ve ever read on my site.)
Man, she would have been on the phone with me the second she saw that crane on the news … and I live in Los Angeles!
She’d have asked me if there was any construction near my office, or near my house. She’d have asked if I was worried about typhoons. She’d have asked if I was worried about tsunamis. Our house is miles inland, and I think it’s maybe rained three times since I moved to LA over a decade ago. Typhoons and tsunamis are not a huge concern.
Earthquakes are a major concern, of course. Well … Not to me. But they were to her. She’d call any time an earthquake made the national news. She’d try to be nonchalant about it, but I could hear the panic in her voice.
“Was that one near you, honey?”
“No, mom. Phoenix is hours away from us.”
“Oh, well. I just saw it on the news and I wanted to know if you were okay.”
“Yes, mom. I’m fine. We’re fine here.”
I talked to my mom almost every single day of my life. That sounds like an exaggeration, but it’s really not. She drove me crazy and I would get hopping mad at her; I never, ever “missed” my mom … because I never went long enough without talking to her. She never let me. Seriously. If I didn’t talk to her on a Tuesday, on Wednesday she would act like it had been months since she’d heard my voice. And I would get exasperated and tell her she needed to love herself and find joy in things other than me and my life. And I would yell at her, and she would be hurt. And she would call me three times the next day.
Holy fuck I miss her.