“And… the doctors still don’t know what it is?” Mom asked.

“I’m scheduled for an MRI in about two weeks,” I said, as I returned to the kitchen table. “The doctors don’t think it’s a brain tumor, but I’ll know in a few weeks. I’m not schizophrenic; I’m not bipolar. It’s not borderline personality disorder…” I took another gulp of tea. “The doctors are just as clueless as I am… maybe more so.”

“Bunch of quacks…” Mom grumbled.

“I’m a weird case, I guess…” I said, as I returned to my seat at the kitchen table.

“Well that’s nothing we don’t all know,” Mom teased.

“Well played,” I snorted.

“Runs in the family, kid. You get it honest,” Mom said.

“Heh, it seems so…” I replied.

“Well… Maybe you should stay here for the week,” Mom suggested, sounding almost hopeful.

I rolled my eyes at the phone, but felt bad about it soon after. She was only trying to help, and even if she didn’t, it was nice to know that she wanted me around all week even though she already had a house full.

“Thanks, Mom. But I think I could really use some alone time,” I explained.

“You’re always alone, these days,” she replied. Her voice was saturated with disappointment. “I’m beginning to wonder if that’s part of the problem. You need to get out more. See new people. I understand enjoying solitude, but ever since you and Bill split-.”

“Mom!” I interrupted her, a little more harshly than I intended, but Bill was pretty much the last thing I wanted to think about right now.

I heard her exhale loudly. “I’m sorry. I know that’s still kind of a sore subject.”

I didn’t answer, and took another long gulp of tea instead.

“For the record I do NOT think you should get back together with him,” Mom continued. “I never liked him from the beginning!”

I chuckled over the rim of my mug. Mom always said that about every guy I dated AFTER we broke up.

“And when I was a young woman I enjoyed doing things on my own, too. I get it. I always said ‘I like me and I like my company,’ but I think being alone so much isn’t healthy either,” she explained. “What if you hurt yourself when you have one of your episodes, and there’s no one around to help you?”

I said nothing. I had no intention of telling Mom about the incident in the car this afternoon.

“You could fall, or get into a car wreck…” she elaborated.

Definitely not telling her about this afternoon… I thought, as I rose from my chair again. I was growing tired of the weight of the damp towel around my head, and I figured my hair was dry enough by now.

“I’ll be fine,” I told her.

“Are you sure?” Mom asked.

I couldn’t reply. I didn’t find my words very convincing either.

“Mom, let me ask you this…” I said while I walked down the hall. “You’ve never been a nag. You’ve never been much a worrier either,” I dropped my towel into the bathroom clothes hamper. “You’ve always been calm... well, except when someone makes you mad. Then you’re definitely not calm.” I heard Mom chuckle over the phone.

“Who? Me? A bad temper?” Mom muttered. “Never…”

“Of course not,” I mused, pacing back towards the kitchen. “I must be mistaken. I’m sure the last person who woke you up from a nap didn’t need both of his arms…”

“I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mom joked. “The neighbor was already missing an arm when I found him…”

Mom and I shared a warped sense of humor.

“But anyway… most of my life it’s been you trying to keep me from worrying. My Plan A for virtually every disaster involves panicking. But not you. You’ve always had a way of keeping your cool,” I explained.

“I don’t know…” Mom said. “Yours, and your brother’s, teen years tested my patience more than once.”

“Hmph,” I grunted into the phone. “I’m sure, but my point is… Why now? I mean, what is it about this situation that’s getting you so worked up? If you don’t mind me saying so, it’s a little out of character for you.”

“I guess you’re right,” Mom replied. Her voice sounded weary. “I didn’t really think about it before, but you have a point –this is out of character for me. Have I really been that bad?”

“Bad enough that I’m afraid to answer that loaded question truthfully,” I replied.

“Smart ass kid,” Mom huffed, and then added with a chuckle. “Don’t know where you got that from…” She paused for a moment. “But in all seriousness, it’s tough to say why. I guess it’s a lot of things. Like I said before, no mother wants to hear that her baby isn’t doing well. You were always a healthy kid. You never had any serious health issues or injuries –not even so much as a broken arm. Oh, you got the occasional cold, flu, fever or strep throat, but nothing that all children don’t come down with at some point.”

“But this… this is serious…” I added, as I lifted my teacup to my lips.

“Yes…” Mom’s voice drifted off. Another silence fell between us.

“There’s another reason isn’t there?” I asked. My Mother and I were very close, we’d grown especially so in the last 5 years, we talked on the phone almost every day. Given the opportunity we’d talk for hours without running out of things to say. I’d come to understand that the silences that fell between us were full of words neither of us wanted to speak, or hear.

“Your father spent an awful lot of time alone, not talking to anyone, in the days before he passed…” Mom said softly.

I paused with the teacup lifted halfway to my lips. My family wasn’t known for subtlety –we seemed to all be born marinated in melodrama. But even for us, that was a heavy-handed statement.

“I don’t think I’m dying, Mom,” I said.

“No, of course not. I know I’m being over dramatic, here. It’s just…” Mom stammered.

“No, you’re not,” I sighed, watching the snow fall through the blinds in the window above my sink. “Death has sneaky ways of reminding you that it’s happened,” I shook my head. “Five years later, and I still see it in passing windows, puddles on the sidewalk, and in the bottom of my teacup…” I smiled sadly into the one in my hand. “It’s a chill that you never warm up from.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Mom said. “Couldn’t have said it better myself. You’ve got a knack for words, kid. You think you don’t, but you string words together like pearls.”

“I have my moments,” I shrugged.

“You should put more of them on paper,” she said.

“I’ll do that in my spare time,” I snorted.

“Spare time? What’s that?” Mom joked.

“I don’t know, but I think it went extinct,” I replied.

After that, Mom and I just reverted to random small talk: occurrences in our day, new movies we’d seen, silly photos we’d shared on Facebook and the like. All talk about my episodes, Bill, and Dad temporarily forgotten. I always wondered how Mom and I could switch back and forth between heavy and light subjects so quickly in a conversation. Fifteen minutes later I heard my brother announce that dinner was ready, and we spent another five minutes wrapping up our chit chat before hanging up.

Conversations between my family and I were rarely brief.

I clicked the “end call” button and exhaled deeply. Between my episode in the shower, and the uncomfortable conversation with my mother, this wasn’t shaping up to be the relaxing evening I intended. So I decided to confide in the one thing that never failed to improve my day. I finished my tea, set my mug in the sink and replaced it with an ice cold beer.

My conversation with Mom played over in my head as I leaned against the counter taking greedy gulps of my Sam Adam’s. A third of the way through and my head was already swimming delightfully. I was fairly certain that my medication bottle said “do not consume alcohol while taking this drug,” a warning which I decided to ignore tonight. It’s not like the meds were working, anyway.

It bothered me that my Mother was so worried. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said that panicking was my default reaction to things. When confronted with unfamiliar problems I often dissolved into a cynical little puddle of anxiety. It’s not that I was incapable of seeing the answers to my problems, I just didn’t trust in my own ability to make the right decision. Instead I looked to my Mother, my friends, and lovers for solutions; I hovered around their judgment like a flame in the shadowy uncertainty of my own self-doubt. I had no fire of my own.

But this situation I was uncharacteristically calm about. I was concerned, but not anxious. At first I’d been very scared, and even now I was frightened by the increasingly realistic nature of my episodes. I realized, however, that unlike most situations in my life this problem didn’t have a multitude of options to fret over choosing. Honestly I really didn’t have any other choices: I could go to doctors, I could make phone calls, and I could wait. Solutions didn’t make me anxious, making choices did, and now I had been relieved of making them.

I was calm, because I just didn’t know what else to be.