We are leasing the basement apartment out.
The day I left for my Great California Adventure, my mother's through thick and thin friend Danny began construction on my old haven. Tearing down walls, putting up new ones. Exactly what I was doing on the other side of the coast, albeit metaphorically. When I came back, I didn't even recognize the place.
And Fredricksbug doesn't recognize me, either.
We have had an open house, and are down to basically two applicants. One couple who, for all intensive purposes, seem sweetly, excruciatingly normal. They even prepared a letter, thanking us for our consideration, and listing thier references. I am surprised that they didn't bring a tin of baked, syrupy goodness with them to the interview. Then, there is the other couple. Two gay men, one a correctional oficer at the juvenile detention center, and one an self- (read: un) employed make up artist. The latter showed up at the open house in a tight sleeveless shirt, branded with metal studs. They would also be bringing in a third roomate, a woman who is gainfully employed at the money making machine known as Arby's.
My mother keeps saying this: the neighborhood. I have to agree that it might be somewhat of a spectacle for our white-bred, monster truck owning neighbors. And I must say, I am completely for it.
I am sick of playing the saftey card.
Sometimes, I see that it hurts my mother to be considered 'different'. I think all her life she has been, whether she knows it or not. She waves cheerfully at the neighbors, she dutifully sends Christmas cards, she bakes cookies as a goodwill gesture to the neighborhood watchdogs peering out of their translucent organza curtains.
I remember being in third or fourth or fifth grade, and my mom would bring in cupcakes for the class on my birthday. She was always filled with an innocent delight, as if she knew she was filling the proper soccer mom PTA position she had always aspired to. But I could see the children looking askance at the cupcakes, wondering why they weren't McDonalds cake (like everyone knew to bring in on a birthday). And the parents, the parents were even worse. They looked askance, too; not at the baked goods, but at my mother's face devoid of make up, her half-hearted attempts at squeezing into the tight vise of the eighties fashion conscious woman. In other words, at the inherent, 'be yourself' mentality of an old guard hippie shining through.
It never embarassed me. I wanted to protect her from that wrongful derision, even when my nine year old brain couldn't completely comprehend or define it. I wonder if she knows what a rare, truly beautiful bird she is. I want to preserve that 'differentness', and it seems to be alive and kicking in my genes as well. I celebrate it when it stirs within me.
But my mom, my beautiful, unique, amazing mother... she still has a perplexed aura tinged with hurt whenever the neighbors don't wave back. So innocent; she doesn't know how to be anything other than herself. And I believe she sees that as a failing somehow on her part.
So we are leasing the basement apartment out. And I fervently hope that it goes to the gay couple, and I hope the neighbors pull out their binoculars to stare at all the strange birds.
Because everyone should have a peacock or two in their life, if only to remind them that the world is populated with more than sparrows.
2:42 p.m. - 2001-08-07
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