Looking for Signs
Mother’s Day came down the chute like a bull with sweat beading off his neck, longing for freedom. I picked up my red cape - the word’s Happy Mother’s Day! - inscribed on it and began to bob and weave. Nicholas, Max, and Joey are ineffable joy, and this game of avoiding being impaled by those feelings never ends well—Mother’s Day.
***
Somehow, I stumbled on -yomamagraves account on Instagram. Her version of motherhood seemed raw and honest, layered with generational trauma, racism, societal expectations, and love.AND it is all AI. I was duped. Horrifying that AI knows what I need to hear about reframing motherhood and gave it to me .
***
I’ve been mentoring a preteen girl, I’ll call Lexi, whose parents abandoned her. She has a righteous anger that bubbles at the surface. She’s fired me twice, although each time she’s changed her mind. And I understand that kind of love - I pick flee any day. The last time she told me to go away, I assumed it would be a few weeks before she called. But she called the very next day, Saturday, the day before Mother’s Day.
“Let’s go see the butterfly exhibit,” she said without saying hello or that it was her, Lexi. “Can you come get me right now?”
“Hi. Lexi, I’m busy now, but I can come get you in two hours.”
The line went dead.
So I said, "Alright, I’ll see you then. Bye,” only because it felt wrong not to complete a call, especially with her.
She is fragile, I said out loud, to no one.
I’d been washing our windows. In the last few weeks, I’d lost the squeegee and now had to rub with paper towels in endless circles. Washing windows felt purposeful - clearing off the grime, so at least the house looks good. Also, my hands needed something to do. They wanted to hold my three kids, all of whom are gone - two in distant states, and one in the most distant state of all.
Tell me again why the dead can’t call on Mother’s Day?
I showed up at Lexi’s home in a dress. I’d talked myself into believing that maybe I just needed someone else to love, not just those three boys. Lexi stormed past me as I signed the documents to check her out. We left at 1:42.
Our conversation didn’t start on the best foot; I had to remind her that the seatbelt was non-negotiable. Then, as I navigated to the interstate, the car air felt heavy no matter how high I turned up the AC.
As we sped past the yellow center lines, I asked one question after another, until I realized we were playing a game - rapid-fire questions answered with a shrug. How’s school? Who are you hanging out with? Do you sleep in on weekends? Do you have enough toiletries for the month? Is that a new shirt? How’s math going? What are you learning in science? I thought you’d fired me, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you didn’t, but I was surprised you’d called.
Nothing got through. Finally, I handed her my phone and said, “Put some music on?”
Linea Personal blasted out the speakers. Linea Personal is a Spanish-speaking group that knows all the notes to longing. Lexi sang along under her breath, “Asi como llegan me los gastos.” We drove that way for ten minutes along the 202, which was absolutely deserted.
A mirage of heat rose off the highway.
I could feel Lexi’s eyes on me, so I turned, and sure enough, there was her patented look of disgust and contempt. I tried to return a slightly kinder smile. But I could relate. If I could have transformed her into my dead son, or me into her alive, but unavailable mother, I would have.
The botanical gardens were a solid twenty miles away, and the highway was deserted. Outside, it was 102, which is high for Phoenix this time of year, so perhaps everyone was hiding. Or maybe Mother’s Day weekend is a time for everyone to spend with their families: everyone but Lexi and me.
We passed the zoo. A place I haven’t gone back to since Nicholas died. It was our go-to adventure, my three boys and I went almost weekly for a while there. Nicholas and his brothers could navigate that place as if it were their second home. They could get from the ice cream stand to the wallabies and then to the petting zoo at a dead run. I was always chasing behind.
A red and black striped snake slithered by from our left side to the right. Nicholas and his brothers had somehow jumped across it and had kept running. I had to wait for it to continue before I could push the unused stroller by.
A part of me thought of crashing the car into the zoo and showing Lexi the path where we’d seen the snake.
“Right here. He was here. All of us were,” I’d say, and point to the ground.
She probably wouldn’t be interested. She’d shrug and sing songs in Spanish to me.
When we finally arrived at the Botanical Gardens, Lexi refused to get out of the car. “This isn’t the butterfly pavilion I wanted.”
I wanted to reply, “Well, I’m not the person you want.” But instead, I convinced her to go in and at least look at the butterflies in a giant cage.
She sulked to the entrance, where we were greeted with Happy Mother’s Day signs. She refused to go a step further.
Back inside the car, with the AC vents blowing on our faces, Linea Personal sang ‘Ese loco say yo,’ and she put it on repeat.
***
On an exciting note - The Trimesters of Grief has been sent to print layout! The next time I’ll see it is when it’s an Advanced Reader Copy, aka an ARC. I’ve been busy getting blurbs like this one from Kristin Seeberger - grief coach@ LITT.
“As both a grieving mother and a grief coach, I’ve long thought of Beautiful Boy as a touchstone for families living with addiction—but it is also a story of survival. Katie’s book is the one we’ve been missing for the age of opioids and fentanyl: a mother’s story that does not have the same ending, told with ferocious honesty and an eye for what might actually help the rest of us keep breathing. Her “trimesters of grief” framework gave me language for what my body and mind were already doing after loss. This is the book I wish I could hand to every parent who has just gotten the call; it stands beside Beautiful Boy as its necessary, devastating counterpart.”
