"Oh my god."
"—it's time for you to make yourself a priority, Mag."
"Right, because I never do that." I gestured to the Zen room, the robes. "Never ever."
"Stop it," she chided. "You know what I mean. You work at your business, you work at your friendships, and you work at giving your dog a life of extraordinary comfort."
"Being the best dog mom is my most important job," I replied.
After a decade-long sigh, she continued, "I want you to commit to caring for yourself this year. I know you've had a difficult run with boys but I want you to give it a real shot this time."
"What do you mean, a real shot?" I sputtered. "I have given it real shots. Lots of shots. So many shots." I channeled my frustration into shaking my head hard enough to make myself dizzy. "I've put myself out there, Mom."
"You have," she said, a bucket of hesitance in her voice. "But—and don't bite my head off here—I don't think you were trying."
Everything I'd said about tolerating her extra-strength mothering was a lie and I wanted those statements struck from the record.
Not trying.
Nottrying.
Was she fucking kidding me?
For fuck's sake,not trying?
"I doubt you see it that way," she said carefully.
I hit her with anuh, you think so? glare.
"And that's because you're not seeing it from my perspective, Mag. You aren't seeing yourself the way I do—beautiful, smart, amazing—and you aren't choosing men who see that either. You are choosing men who walk all over your kindness and abuse your generous spirit and treat you like you're disposable. Like a damn plastic straw." She wagged a finger at me.
Oh, great. Now it's the Big Ask and some Big Trouble."Mom—"
"No," she shot back. "You are not a plastic straw, my girl. You're compostable."
I laughed before the tears started pouring down my face. That was the proper order of operations. If I didn't lead with laughter, I'd drown in my weak, tender spots. I knew this because I'd drowned there before.
"Compostable?" I asked, sniffling. "Like eggshells and apple cores?"
"Don't start with the eggshells," she replied. "You're no eggshell. You're tough like potato peels and artichoke leaves."
I thumbed open my imaginary notebook, pulled an imaginary pencil from behind my ear. "December twenty-eighth, the day my mother referred to me as a potato peel."
"So dramatic," she murmured.
"Please. Ash is the dramatic one."
"Your brother is moody," she argued. "Ash is temperamental, Linden is introverted, and you are, on occasion, dramatic."
Yes, my brothers and I were named after trees. I got off easy with Lynn as my middle name in honor of my great-grandmother but Ash Indigo and Linden Wolf got screwed. That was how it went with hippie parents.
They'd missed out on the Summer of Love but that hadn't stopped my parents from living the hippie life. They'd had the VW van, the long hair, the peace, the love, and the weed. And then they'd found three heartbeats.
I didn't know the precise sequence of events that followed but I knew my father cut his hair, took a job as a mail clerk, and started night school a few months before we were born. My mother had stayed home with us when we were babies before Mrs. Santillian became everyone's favorite substitute teacher in the New Bedford Public School district.
But they never abandoned their hippie lives, not all the way. They'd championed organic farming long before it was a widespread practice and when we'd moved from an apartment to a single family home, they commandeered the entire backyard for that purpose. My dad was an accountant now and—rather unbelievably—enjoyed the shit out of the tax code. And he still drove the VW van.
My mother tapped my wrist. "I've known each of you since the first time I saw your little faces on the sonogram. I knew who you were."
