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I'm still solid

Admittedly, I could have left the office at 5:30pm. But I was glued to my seat. The image of me dashing out of my apartment to catch the 3:50am bus to get to the office at 5am and my mom trying to hand me anonymously a banana out the front door, was at once hysterical and well, hysterical. Like a woman laced in the Victorian tradition, I feel at a loss for breath when I'm with my mother too long. She was sitting in semi-darkness waiting for me to leave, as if waiting to pounce, and I babbled something about leading orientation and meetings, and all the things I had to do at the office, when all I really wanted to say is, "you're stifling me, and it's beyond your control. We can't do this. We can't be together like this. We need space to love and live peacefully on earth together and I love you, and all the things you've done like scrub my kitchen floor, and buying me a kettle and gloves to hold hot pans, and the post-it suggestions on all my kitchen cabinets of where things go since you've used a kitchen for so many years...all of it, I love it all, and some things that you brought will have to go when you leave on Thursday. I'm allergic to apples; so the crisper filled with apples will have to be emptied, and I will have to wash the cover of the futon and burn my sage smudge. And I love you with all my heart, just skip the 5 day visit next time, and skip asking to do my laundry. I can wash my dirty underwear myself."

I did tell her that. It feels invasive when my 69 year old mother wants to wash her 37 year old son's underwear...

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