by Sam Kopf

Created on: December 08, 2008

Reality

She lay on the floor with her knees hugged to her chest. Her nightgown, thin from wear, stretched over her feet, binding her in a tight ball. At ten years old I could not grasp the immensity of her distress. At nineteen, I'm unsure if I will ever be able to.

To a little girl, a mom is indestructible. My mother epitomized togetherness. Late at night, after she had tucked me in, I'd crawl out of bed to watch from the balcony as she prepared my siblings' and my lunches for school the next day. Hidden in the dark, I would listen to her speak to our togs, convincing me that after I went to sleeps, dogs could talk. She went to bed long after my eyes had closed and was in my room in the morning to wake me up. AS far as I knew, my mom functioned above basic human necessity.

Tuesday night was pizza night. After my sister finished softball practice, my mom, the coach, would pile whoever could fit into our van. Along with our dinner, the old Italian men that worked at the restaurant would be waiting when we arrived. For hours we'd sit, my siblings and me laughing in a booth of our own while my mom listened until the men stopped talking. After dinner we were allowed to go behind the counter and take one lollipop each. Every week she'd bring a watermelon one home for my dad.

On the weekends, she slept in. The smell of Canadian bacon meant that my dad was in charge. Behind the lens of his video camera my dad would laugh at the intensity of our imaginations. Meant to capture the happy times, those videos first exposed me to a completely foreign and disturbing side of my mother.

After my older sister left for college, the videos resurfaced. In a cloud of sentimentality I, along with my inner child, sat through hours of film. I laughed at my fluorescent bike shorts, cried at my shattered fly-girl dreams, and wondered at my mother's absence.

Each tape began the same way. My father's voice narrating the date, time, and all of our ages from behind the camera as my siblings and I sat, glued to the TV, in matching pajamas. Saturday morning cartoon would end and we'd migrate to the playroom to act in the latest of my older brother's original works. Long after the completion of our latest mining excursion underneath the pool table, my mother would appear.

Even through a snowy screen, the symptoms of a night of hard partying were obvious. Swollen eyes, smudged make-up, and a definite case of the morning blues, my mother cringed in pain to my siblings' and my childish squeals.

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