“No, it’s my new tagline. Look.” My mother’s fingers fly over the keyboard. The best advice she ever gave me was to take a typing course. I’d fought her furiously. It was in the voc-tech side of my high school and full of kids who were not in my über-academic classes—kids who smoked outside before school, who wore heavy eyeliner and listened to heavier metal.Are you there to judge people or to type?she’d asked me. In the end I was one of three girls who got a blue ribbon from the teacher for mastering seventy-five words per minute. Nowadays I use a keyboard, of course, but every time I type up an assessment for one of my clients, I silently thank my mother for being right.
She brings up her business’s Facebook page. There’s a picture of her on it, and her cheesy tagline. “You would haveknownthat was my new motto if you’d accepted my friend request.”
“Are you seriously going to hold social networking etiquette against me?” I ask.
“All I know is that I carried you for nine months. I fed you, I clothed you, I paid for your college education. Friending me on Facebook seems like a small thing to ask in return.”
“You’re mymother.You don’t have to be my friend.”
She gestures at my belly. “I just hope that she gives you the same heartache you give me.”
“Why do you evenhaveFacebook, anyway?”
“Because it’s good for business.”
She has three clients that I know of—none of whom seem perturbed that my mother has no degree in counseling or consulting or anything else you’d want from a motivational coach. One client is a former stay-at-home mother who wants to rejoin the workforce but has no skills beyond making a mean PB&J sandwich and separating lights from darks. One is a twenty-six-year-old guy who recently found his birth mother but is afraid to make contact with her. And the last is a recovering alcoholic who just likes the stability of a meeting every week.
“A life coach should be on the cutting edge. Hip,” my mother says.
“If you were hip, you wouldn’t use the wordhip.You know what I think this is about? The movie we went to last Sunday.”
“I didn’t like it. The book’s ending was better—”
“No, not that. The girl at the ticket booth asked if you were a senior, and you didn’t say another word for the rest of the night.”
She stands up. “Do Ilooklike a senior, for God’s sake? I color my hair religiously. I have an elliptical machine. I gave up Brian Williams for Jon Stewart.”
I have to give her this—she looks better than most of my friends’ mothers. She has the same poker-straight brown hair and green eyes that I do and the kind of funky, eclectic style that always makes you look twice at someone, wondering if she planned the outfit meticulously or just rummaged in the depths of her closet. “Mom,” I say, “you are the youngest sixty-five-year-old I know. You don’t need Facebook to prove it.”
It amazes me that someone—anyone—would pay my mother to be a life coach. I mean, as her daughter, isn’t her advice the very thing I’ve tried to escape? But my mother insists that her clients like the fact that she’s survived a great loss herself; it gives her credibility. She says the vast majority of life coaches are nothing more than good listeners who, every so often, can give a procrastinator a kick in the pants. And really, what are the best credentials for that, outside of being a mother?
I peer over her shoulder. “Don’t you think you should mention me on the site?” I say. “On account of the fact that I’m your primary qualification for this job?”
“Imagine how ridiculous it will look if your name is on the site and there isn’t a link to your profile. But”—she sighs—“that’s only for people who’ve accepted my friend invitation . . .”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” I lean down and type, my hands between hers, this baby pressed to her back. I log in to my profile. The live feed that fills the screen contains the thoughts and actions of people I went to high school with or other music therapists or former professors; a former college roommate named Darci I haven’t spoken with in months.I should call her,I think, and at the same time I know I won’t. She has twins who are just going to preschool; their smiling faces are her profile photo.
I accept my mother’s pending friend request, even though it feels like a new low in social networking. “There,” I say. “Happy?”
“Very. Now at least I know I’ll be able to see new pictures of my grandchild when I log in.”
“As opposed to driving a mile to my apartment to see her in person?”
“It’s the principle, Zoe,” my mother says. “I’m just glad you finally got off your high horse.”
“No horses,” I say. “I’m just not in the mood to fight until it’s time to leave for my baby shower.”
My mother opens her mouth to respond, then snaps it shut. For a half second, she contemplates going along with the ruse, and, just as quickly, she gives up. “Who told you?”
“I think the pregnancy is bringing out a sixth sense in me,” I confide.
She considers this, impressed. “Really?”
I walk into her kitchen to raid the fridge—there are three tubs of hummus and a bag of carrots, plus various indistinguishable clots in Tupperware containers. “Some mornings I wake up and I just know Max is going to say he wants Cap’n Crunch for breakfast. Or I’ll hear the phone ring and I know it’s you before I even pick up.”
“I used to be able to predict rain when I was pregnant with you,” my mother says. “I was more accurate than the weatherman on the ABC news.”
I dip my finger into the hummus. “When I woke up this morning, the whole bedroom smelled like eggplant parmigiana—you know, the really good kind that they make at Bolonisi’s?”
