Nuggets

On the summer days or presidents’ week vacation, I’d follow my mother around the house, curious about what she did on a normal day. With the boys somewhat self-sufficient and me always more responsible than they were, she took on the onus of our stuffed house, her parents, and my father. We mostly took up emotional energy, I realize now, and actively undid all her work on the house without realizing it.

We always joked about my mother leaving glasses of water all over the house. In her bustling she’d realize she was thirsty, forget she’d already filled and left a glass of water around the kitchen, and bring the next cup of water with her wherever she was headed. She’d get busy or called away by her obnoxious kids, and later that evening we’d have to collect her water glasses when we ran the dishwasher. More often than not, one of the glasses would end up spilled before the day was over. Thus they were christened, “water bombs.”

I suppose in a house of six people the logic goes thisaway: Look, there’s a glass of water; I wonder if it’s mine. It can’t possibly be mine, there are five other people, plus guests, roaming this house right now. At least three of them have hacking colds, too. If I move it, one of the kids will yell about me throwing out his glass of water. I will leave it.

So when some skinny elbow or flailing overexcited hand brushed one off a shelf, or the hearth, or the washing machine, or the end table… the permutations are endless. We all did it, and we all smiled patiently, laughed together, and screamed out, “Water Bomb!” My mother rolled her eyes, surely thinking they couldn’t all be her glasses of water, and handed us the paper towels.

Just as a game, though, when I was following my mother around on those rainy vacation days, I’d count myself lucky if I found her morning tea. It was never anywhere near the kitchen. I figured out it was closest to the location of the first errand of the day, left cold and lonely in a linen closet, the basement, the shelf above the recycling in the garage, next to the stack of library books that needed to go back. I’d find it and rejoice privately, the real thing after ten false-gold nuggets in the form of water bombs. And before I’d wander back to the kitchen with it, or offer it to her wherever she was, I’d take a sip.

Black tea, English breakfast or the equivalent, not enough sugar for me, a lot of skim milk, stone cold. Maybe this explains why I can never drink mine hot.