Knocked Down by Aileen Weintraub

Author:Aileen Weintraub [Weintraub, Aileen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000 Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs, BIO022000 Biography & Autobiography / Women
Publisher: Nebraska

19

Going in Reverse

Week 28½

Early the next morning, my mother called with a new level of urgency in her voice. The Great Annual Mealy Moth Invasion had begun. Like me and my wolf spiders, my mother was plagued with moths and spent a good part of her time methodically plotting their annihilation. She had packed up the entire edible contents of her kitchen—spice rack, peanuts, even canned goods—and jammed them into her refrigerator. You practically had to wear body armor to get to the cheese bin lest an avalanche of lentils, Frosted Flakes, and couscous overcome you.

After much trial and error, my mother had concluded that the best way to exterminate the mealy moths was by weaponizing a Swiffer Wet Jet. With the grace of a trained assassin, she would grab her Swiffer, spin it upside down, and tiptoe over to her victim. Then, with brutal force and stone-cold precision, she would push the dripping mop onto the ceiling to kill the moth, smooshing it with patented Wet Jet technology.

“Mom, I miss you.” I had interrupted her account of her double life as a moth slayer/Jewish mother.

“I can’t come visit right now. I’ve just pulled my whole house apart. Don’t make me feel guilty.”

“I’m lonely in my marriage, Ma. He barely ever comes home.”

“What makes you think I have such good advice? My marriage wasn’t so great.”

“Well, what did you learn from it?”

“I have three boxes of opened matzah meal. I can’t even figure that out.”

“Ma, focus.”

“Okay, well, your father was just like Chris in many ways,” she said.

“What? The man hardly worked.”

“That wasn’t always the case. You just don’t remember. When we were first married, he’d never take a day off. Once, I sprained my ankle and needed him to come pick me up from night classes at the college. As he was helping me into the car, he told me that he had to work the next day. Didn’t matter that I had two little ones at home.”

“Dad hated work. Why wouldn’t he take off?”

“I think he was afraid he’d lose his momentum. Maybe he figured if he stopped working, he’d have a hard time going back.”

“Well, he was right.”

“Trust me, if I had figured all this out back then, the problem would have been addressed somehow.”

“So you think Chris is afraid he’ll lose his momentum?”

“What do I know? I’m just saying, there may be something else driving Chris that you haven’t figured out yet.”

“This conversation has raised a lot more questions than it’s answered.”

“So go find the answers. But don’t be surprised if it takes you thirty years of marriage. I have to go deal with my moths.”

She made loud kissing sounds before she hung up, and I was left wondering if there was something deeper driving Chris to succeed. Though, according to my mother, I wouldn’t figure out the answer for another twenty-nine years.

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