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“Is this place safe?” She asked as a long haired guy with multiple tattoos and a young woman smelling of patchouli passed our table.
I could feel my heart speed up a beat and my muscles tense at my mother’s question.
“Is it safe? It’s a dessert cafe, for crying out loud!” I screamed inside my head. Then, I took a calming breath and gently reassured her, “Yes, mom, we are fine. I come here all the time. They have incredible cheesecake.”
This one breath, one simple moment of self-awareness, one softening of my heart was the difference between a fond memory and yet another wound in our already bruised and battered relationship.
As a young man, I bristled whenever friends and family suggested that mom and I fought so much because we were so alike. I could not see it. She was about rules, appearances, manners, and the way things “should” be done. I was constantly challenging every bit of that in our tug-of-war of wills and worldviews. “We could not be more different.” I thought. Today, I know better.
We definitely did not share the same values of etiquette and appearances, and I certainly did not see my everyday world as a dangerous place. However, we did share the same temperament. Our commonality was in our energy, the instant rush of adrenaline and powerful emotion we felt whenever we saw something beautiful or sensed that something was not right. Big or small, it did not matter. . . same energy.
She would joyfully alert the whole house upon seeing a brown thrush at the bird feeder. I could go on for hours about Star Wars. She blew her top when I used too big of Band-Aid on my friend’s knee, and I lost it over having to do a whole page of math problems for my new teacher.
Our biggest difference was that I did not see the everyday world as a dangerous place. She did. But, then again, I was just a baby when she almost lost me. That must have impacted her. We never talked much about the surgery that saved my life. We never talked about what that was like for her, for my father, or for my brothers. It was my grandfather who told me the story of “How you almost died.”
When mom asked me “Is this place safe.” I felt angry. I was offering her a gift. I was welcoming her into my happy place. I was inviting her to connect with me over one of the few things we both deeply appreciated. . . dessert. Why did she have to ruin this moment with her irrational fear?
At the time I thought she was afraid for her own safety, but now I realize that she was not just asking, “Are you and I safe here tonight?” She was imagining me coming here on a regular basis, staying late into the evening, hanging out with people with long hair, tattoos, and multiple piercings. She wanted to know if I was safe, in Durham, on my own; carefree, a bit too trusting, her baby that almost did not make it. Was I safe?
How many battles, how much friction, how much hurt, how much distrust, all from the fear of losing me? But not this night. This was a truce. This is now one of my most sacred memories.
“It is ok, Mom. We are safe.” I said, and she believed me. She relaxed and we declared a truce for cheesecake.
There would be many more battles and even a near annihilation of our relationship just two years later. Still, it is this moment, not the battles, that reveals who we really were to each other. Yes, she was frightened of many things. Yes, I was reactive and impulsive. Also, she loved me, I loved her, and we both loved hanging out with the hippies at Francesca's Dessert Caffe. It was our happy place.
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