Writing Exercise #1

Author's Note: Wow, haven't been on here in a while! For my fiction workshop class I'm doing lots and lots of writing exercises that challenge me as a writer to develop crucial skills - like developing a strong voice, sense of setting and character, and gain a greater understanding of story telling in general. I think I'll begin to post these exercises up on here in hopes they reach a wider range of eyes that can possibly supply me with a greater range of feedback! This particular piece was an exercise that required the writer to start with, "My mother never..." and then to finish this sentence, and keep going. This work is where that sentence led me to. **Disclaimer: there are a few swears in this piece.**

My mother never cursed.

And I mean, never. She was the kind of person who would stub her toe on an overbearing chair leg or slam her fingers in the car door or drop her keys down the sewer while running late to work and, instead of stream out a long line of expletives, she would exclaim in a voice similar to that of one admiring a small mammal, “Goodness me!” or, “Oh, dear!,” or the most nauseatingly innocent of her many catchphrases (always accompanied by a slight shrug of the shoulders and a knowing smile): “I guess that’s just how the cookie crumbles.”

[Insert gagging noise here.]

So, as you can imagine, being the angsty, millennial, only-child teenage boy I am, I hated this about my mother. It wasn't just her disinterest in the satisfaction of loudly yelling “FUCK” when you drop your perfectly sculpted ice cream cone on the ground before even getting in a solid lick, or when nearly crashing into the dick who suddenly slams on their brakes ON THE HIGHWAY - who, in my opinion, deserve a level of hell all to themselves - but her general saintly disposition in all aspects of her life led me to resent conversation with her, or meaningful interactions with her in general, really.

Every morning she would descend the stairs and into the kitchen already dressed in coordinating pastels, her blonde hair perfectly straightened, and a giant smile on her face. That woman must have had cheeks of steel with the amount of smiling she did. Seriously, the muscles in her cheeks could probably rival those of the Rock. Oh, how I hated this. Then, in a sing-songy voice she would announce, “What a beautiful day!” even if rain was pouring down outside and thunder shook the window pane.

“Nathan?” She’d then ask, and patiently wait until I finally dug out my head from a close inspection of my cereal bowl and acknowledge her question to continue.

Still smiling, she'd ask, “How did you sleep?” or a similar variant of a caring, motherly question, to which I’d be forced to reply in a matter that almost never met her Morning Happiness Standards, which, if I'm being fair, weren't very high. I just wasn't a Morning Person, or a Happy Person if I'm honest, nor a Person That Particularly Enjoys Sentimental Mother/Son Interactions, so you can imagine the painful repercussions of this morning ritual for both parties involved.

Yet it happened every day, for as long as I can remember.

Knowing that I’d hurt her feelings otherwise, I'd try to answer her questions as cheerily as I possibly could but seeing that this feat was physically painful for me to perform, my replies would mostly come off as sarcastic. But, even then, she never got mad.

Not even that time I got caught stealing records from the store downtown, or when that party sophomore year got busted. Not even when I crashed her car into a flagpole at school while drifting in the parking lot right after I got my license. Instead, my parents sat me down and my mother just smiled sadly and said she was “disappointed” in me, and then, get this, asked me if there was anything SHE could do to help me get out of this rut I was in. I would have preferred she yelled until she was blue in the face, grounded me for a month, hell, maybe even throw in a little backhanded slap to the face, huh, Mom?

But, never. Instead she showered me with all the love and support and smiles any kid could ever ask for. Except me, that is. Because I wasn't a kid worthy of that, I wasn't the kid my mother deserved. Or maybe, I just didn't deserve her.

Apparently, the universe agreed.

She was diagnosed in the beginning of summer, and Death came unapologetically with the fall, taking the leaves off their branches and the light from her eyes in one foul swoop.

One day near the end, after she had said she couldn't do any more treatment and just wanted to come home, I came into her room in the early morning when I thought she’d be asleep. I had stopped coming to her room during the hours she was awake. I knew how incredibly selfish this was and how it made me that much more of a horrible person, but it was too unsettling to see two sunken craters where plump happy cheeks should be, and lips that seemed they would crack if she tried to move them. I just couldn't stand the sight of her face without a smile on it. Ironic. I know.

She was sitting up in bed, staring out the open window. She'd requested to keep it open 24/7 ever since she got home from the hospital. She said she was catching up on all the “healthy air” she'd missed while she was gone. She made it sound like she was returning from a fucking summer camp instead of chemotherapy.

Since I wasn't expecting her to be awake, I awkwardly stood in the doorway of her room, not knowing if I should enter or retreat back to my bed where I could put on my headphones and turn up the volume and try to drown out the beeping of the machines hooked up to her chest. But then she patted the place on the bed next to her, and I had no choice but to sit gingerly on the edge- as if the weight of my presence could trigger some unseen hand to crawl out from wherever it was hiding and drag us both out of this life.

For a while, neither one of us said anything. I listened to the sound of air rattling in and out of her tired lungs; she stared contentedly at something outside the window I couldn't see.

Finally, in a voice so quiet I almost didn't hear her, she whispered, “What a beautiful day.”

Immediately, I stood up from the bed, seeing the startled look on her face as I did so, but continuing on anyways.

I shouted, “How the fuck can you say that, Mom? Look around you! You’re dying,” I let out a cruel, half-choked laugh. “You’re going to be dead. That is something that is actually happening. This is not a beautiful day. None of these days are beautiful!” I could only choke out the last few words because suddenly I’m crying for the first time since I can remember and my breath comes in hiccups and my palms are on fire and did I punch that hole in the wall??

Suddenly it hits me that this woman in front of me, who has never even had it in her to say a bad word, who has never raised her voice, who probably has never even tried a piece of that candy in the bulk section of the grocery store because who doesn't do that? - will shortly become just another name on the list of Non-Persons.

By this point I'm shaking and snot is running all over my face and I'm remembering the time I went to bed mad at my mom when I was six and refused to say “I love you” when she tucked me in at night and how much I'm regretting that moment. How I'd become a Morning Person and a Happy Person and A Person Their Mother is Proud Of just to take that moment back.

My knees give out and I fall back down to the bed, my head in my hands. I'm expecting my mother to tell me to get out, or my dad to come barging through the door, red-faced and demanding I apologize for speaking to my mother like that when she pulls me into a hug and whispers sadly into my ear, “That’s just how the cookie crumbles.”

I have enough left in me to get out, “That's one damn awful cookie.”