“You don’t believe in evolution?! I shouted. It’s all around you mom! Plants, animals... PEOPLE! You’re literally surrounded by evolution!” I didn’t expect to get as high as I was. I knew better, but I just wanted one little hit to make the food taste better. I can’t smoke at my mothers, I mean I’m allowed but I shouldn’t. The majority of people in the world would agree that you shouldn’t smoke, fuck, or heavily drink at your mother’s house when you visit. I am not in that majority.
Thirty two years old and there I was, bent over my dresser drawer like teenager protecting my nudey magazine collection. I kept looking over my shoulder, pausing to listen for footsteps, feeling like a criminal. I dug my little pipe out and slowly cracked my bedroom window. See, mom had asked me not to smoke in the house, she could always tell too. She had the nose of a basset hound. So I had found a way to respectfully ignore her request... I would crack windows, spray cologne, hell I'd even light candles... I was prepared to do anything, anything except go outside in the freezing temperatures to take a measly hit of weed before dinner.
As soon as the spark hits I hear a pounding on the hallway walls. It was a poor man’s intercom system.
POUND. POUND. POUND.
“Michael... Supper is ready.”
There was a brief pause, and then...
“Is that smoke? What did I tell you about that in the house?”
Fuck. I panicked. I slammed the window shut and began fumigating the room with axe body spray.
Mom and I had a few conversations about Religion recently. She had found herself back in the pew after my step father Wayne passed away. I don’t blame her. She needed it. They were together for almost twenty years, and then one day he's just gone. She felt ripped off. She needed something or someone to be mad at because she couldn't be at just nothing. She felt like someone messed up the order and took my step father too soon and now mom wants to speak to the manager.
“We were NOT monkeys!” My mother screamed.
“I’m not saying WE were. Not US mom, no you and I have always been human. I’m talking about where we came from.”
“No. We were never monkeys Michael. God made us in his image and HE is NOT a monkey.” She argued.
“Maybe he is... Or was.” I responded.
My mother shook her head at me in anger and disapproval. I was too high for this conversation. My speech was sloppy, my words chattered and sentences would drag on way too long. I found myself rambling, grabbing onto figurative roots and old bricks as I descended down an abandoned well of conversation... Much like what’s happening now.
Too. Many. Words.
The way she was so sure that God was real (and not a monkey) sent shivers down my spine. They got to her. Christianity spreads the same way vampires do. The strongest one will sink his teeth in, you’ll drink some blood of Christ and then BOOM you have a craving, nay - a hunger for the holy spirit for the rest of your days.
My mother was never an overly religious woman. No, she was in a rock band. Well, she ran the lights for one. Mom was cool. I guess that’s what happens, the older you get the more religious you become. Makes sense. Everybody’s invincible at sixteen. It get's harder to run from Vampires once you become older and weaker. They do tend to prey on the elderly.
Here's the real rub, I don't have the right answer either. I barely have any real answers. The only answer I did have at the time was that she had less answers than I did. I can't blame her, I'm scared too. The only thing any of us are armed with in this world is fear and uncertainty. I'm just not scared enough to believe. Belief in the supernatural is almost supernatural.
Fear; the ultimate motivator.
My mother was one of the strongest most independent women I've ever met in my life. With that being said, if you were to ask me for a third descriptive word about my mother, it would be "Terrified." She feared the most mundane things. I wasn't allowed to drive if it was heavily raining outside until I was nineteen years old. Go ahead and re-read that last sentence, I'll wait.
She was crippled by fear and it just got worse after Wayne passed away.
I know she was scared. Lonely even. But how could "they" have brainwashed her to the point of denying something so painfully clear like the theory of evolution?! Oh right, they did it by talking to her. Did she really need someone to talk to that badly? Where was I?
It scared me. I quickly found myself worried about her.
I can’t leave. I can never leave. She won’t make it here on her own. Suddenly I was having flashbacks of her selling all different types of technology because “They didn’t work right anymore.” She still used a flip phone for God’s sake.
We argued, passionately for a good ten to fifteen minutes. Finally I changed the subject. She got angry talking about it as well. And the next one, and the one after that. Her words dripped with venom, they stung. She would swell up like a dog who wanted you to know that it's not safe to come near it. She was hurt. Wounded. The irony was, she was dealing with it like an animal in the wild would. Who if you remember from her adamant arguments, have no relation to us what so ever.
She was hissing and growling so no one could ever get too close ever again. Because if anyone would get that close and hurt her as bad as the pain from Wayne passing away, well, then she’d probably die too.