This is a work of fiction; all characters are 18 and over.
Chapter 1
By all accounts I've lived a fairly normal life. I suppose it's up for debate as to whether or not it's been a "successful" one, but I'd like to think that it mostly has. I'm in my 40s and have had a steady job at the same place for over ten years now. I make good money there, I have my own place that I do my best to make sure looks livable, and even my little car is still in good shape.
All in all, a pretty normal life, I'd like to think.
But I don't think anyone would ever guess, not my co-workers, my friends, not the girl at my bank who wears the cute sweaters, that for the last several years I've been having an ongoing, passionate, sexual relationship with my own mother.
I realize how insane it sounds. Sometimes, even I forget.
But there are moments during any given normal day...during zoom meetings for work, getting groceries, going to the gym, or hanging out with friends, when out of nowhere it hits me...and I wonder what everyone would think if they knew that I had fallen in love with my mother, and she with me, and that we expressed our love with each other physically.
My mother and I had a pretty normal relationship, growing up. Looking back I suppose she was more of the disciplinarian than my father, which created a few tough moments between us. I was pretty awful as a teenager. Even by the usual standards, when your kid stops being so sweet and loving and hormones turn them into a monster, I was moody and angry all the time and took it out on the both of them. I still feel very bad about that time of my life sometimes.
As I do my post-college years; I found acclimating to adult life a rough period. I was probably depressed but didn't know how to explain it and they didn't know how to handle that and it caused problems between all of us. There were some pretty intense conversations she had to have with me about getting my life together. As I look back, she was totally right, but from my perspective, I wish she had been more caring and understanding and could see that I needed help. Again, it's another time of my life I don't like looking back on.
But eventually, thankfully, I managed to pull myself out of all that. I got my first real paying job in my field. It didn't pay much, but it got me a foothold, and I was able to save up enough money to get myself back to school. I'll always remember the day I walked across that stage with my graduate degree, in that god awful musty robe, and my mom hugged me with tears in her eyes. I look back now and realize that was probably the moment that we had officially moved past those rough times.
My mother and father separated a few years after that. I sort of knew it was coming. They sat me down and told me one evening. It was uncomfortable but I understood. I wasn't a child anymore, I told them. I could tell they had been drifting apart and I was able to see it was a mutual decision. I could even understand that maybe some of that friction from my twenties had been because they were going through a lot as well.
After that, my father moved out. I still see him, although not as often as I probably should. He seems happy, but for the most part his new life is pretty disconnected from me.
My mom, I see more often, given that she lives closer to me. Since the divorce she's slowly made their home into her home. Having just retired, she spent most of her time indulging in her love of plants and gardening and exercising, turning an entire room into a greenhouse practically, putting a small exercise room upstairs, and even an art studio in a little outbuilding in the back yard. She seemed very happy, and I was happy for her.
But then the pandemic happened; like most people it affected my life for sure. The very second the word came down from corporate that we could work remotely, I packed up my things, grabbed my laptop and I was a cloud of dust. In a lot of ways, getting out of that stuffy office and away from all the backstabbing and the infighting and being able to just work from home did wonders for me.
My mother, on the other hand, took it a lot harder. She was just starting to enjoy her life again, and suddenly being forced to stay at home really took a toll on her.
By the time we were all getting out and about again, I made a promise to see her more often. She didn't live that far away from me and after a solid year of not being able to see anyone I figured it would be good if I started making time for her. Something about the idea of her rattling around that house alone again, even after the pandemic, bothered me.
So one Friday night, after clocking out, I texted her, asking if I could bring some laundry over under the guise of wanting to save some money by not using the machines in my apartment building and that I'd even bring a pizza over from her favorite place.
I don't think I had ever seen so many smiley-face emojis in one text before.
When I got to her house I finally got to see just what it was she had been doing all that time; the place was full of plants and art and color and a jigsaw puzzle, half-finished on the dining room table. When she told me that she ate most of her meals in the little breakfast nook in the kitchen, I couldn't help but feel a little sad. With me and dad gone, where else would she eat?
I quickly threw my clothes in the washing machine, we joked about her weird good-for-the environment detergent she had apparently been buying, and effectively managed to destroy nearly an entire extra-large pizza with breadsticks while sitting at the breakfast nook, all the while talking and enjoying our company again.
And as we sat on the couch afterwards, the television on some really awful reality show where people have to get engaged in 24 hours or something like that, sound down real low, we got caught up on the "heavy" stuff that had been going on: the deaths in the family and the fights she had had with friends about the pandemic and politics until she started to cry.
They weren't heaving, wracking sobs or anything. At first, I didn't even know she was crying. She was just talking how much time like she felt like she lost with friends and even me, and then I heard a small waver in her voice and I turned to see her hand to her mouth, tears in her eyes.
At first, I didn't know how to react. I know that probably sounds strange. I had seen my mother cry before, of course. But it was when I was a child, mostly; at funerals or when the family got bad news. Usually my father would be the one to step in and I'd just keep my distance because it's always somewhat strange as a child when you see a parent cry.
But seeing her there, right next to me, tears in her eyes, she just seemed so small and vulnerable that I put my arms around her. All at once she seemed to sigh and just collapse into me. It was probably the first time I had ever actually held her like that in my life. We didn't say anything. I just whispered "shhhh" and sat my chin against the top of her head as she started to calm herself.
Eventually the tears started to subside. It was so quiet in the room at that moment; just us, curled up on the couch together, watching television. After the next commercial break I could hear long, sustained breathing coming from her, a feeling of rising and falling against me, and I realized she had fallen asleep.
At first, I felt very uncomfortable about that. I had laundry to load up before heading home and I had no idea if I would be able to get myself out from under her without waking her up. I tried shifting a few times and she only sort of burrowed down deeper into the crook of my arm, so eventually I just stayed still and let her sleep against me, the feeling of discomfort starting to wane as I finally started to enjoy the peace of the moment; how warm she was against me.
After about an hour, long enough for two more episodes, she moved against me and yawned, waking up. She apologized. I could see in her eyes she was very embarrassed about crying the way she did, but I assured her that it was okay, and that she'd always have me in her life and that I wasn't going anywhere. I even made the snap decision right there to bring over laundry and pizza the next Friday as well.
Again, she seemed embarrassed, telling me that surely I had better things to do on my Friday nights than spending them with my flaky old mother. But I told her the truth, that I enjoyed the evening and the chance to save five bucks on laundry, even if it meant watching awful reality TV all evening.
She folded the pizza box into the trash and started the dishwasher while I folded my laundry. As I got to the socks she moved on to arranging the throw pillows to their proper places on the couch when she looked over and saw the weird way I still ball my socks up, and she smiled and laughed and I couldn't help but laugh too.
At the end of the night she walked me to the door and thanked me for coming by. She didn't bring up the crying and falling asleep on my shoulder, but I could see in her eyes she wanted to say something.
I let her off the hook by giving her a big hug. She pressed her head against my chest and I told her I'd see her the next Friday and that I loved her. She said she loved me too and then we kissed goodbye.
It was a brief kiss. A mother-son kiss, like lots of parents and children share, remarkable in that moment only for the fact that we probably hadn't done anything like that since I was a child. In fact, driving home, I thought nothing else of it.
Neither of us knew it at that time, but that kiss would change both of our lives forever.
Chapter 2
These were our Friday nights.
Sometime around lunch, every Friday, I'd text her a simple question: "Laundry night?" And almost instantly she'd text back with either a thumbs up or a smiley face with sunglasses or sometimes even just a pizza slice or a small carton of Chinese food if it was clear she was pizza-ed out.
After work I'd take my laundry down to the car, pick up the food and get to mom's house by early evening. I'd throw the clothes in the wash, slam the lid, hit the button and by the time I would walk back into the kitchen and she'd already have the table set, the food ready and glasses with ice out for the drinks.
We'd sit in the breakfast nook, every inch of that small table covered by our food, and get caught up on our week that was. She'd ask me about work and I'd tell her the truth; that it was a grind but that I was still happy with the job even though I was starting to think about how to take that next "step." And she'd tell me that she was happy I had finally figured out what I wanted to do with my life and that I had accomplished as much as I had up to that point.
