The Hats Mom Wore

“Come on, sweetie. I need you to get up because mommy has a big day ahead,” goaded Janet, trying her best to use a motherly singsong voice. 

She opened the blinds, specks of floating dust glistening like suspended flecks of dancing glitter as they caught the sun’s morning rays. 

Lucas didn’t move. She heard an indistinguishable groan, perhaps a grunt or a cough.

He was normally a morning kid, to say the least. The moment she came to rouse him for the day, he’d spring up in his little bed like a pop-up book character finally freed from its flap.

In fact, after he graduated from his crib last year to a “big boy bed,” she had to install a safety bar to prevent him from accidentally flailing himself out of the bed with uncontainable morning energy.

This made today’s torporific reaction not only out of character, but concerning.

Janet sliced through the room in two swift strides, her mother gene programming an automatic panic response, silencing any frustration.

Before she had even touched the amorphous lump of her son enshrouded in his favorite train quilt, she could feel a heated aura emanating from his body. 

“Oh my goodness,” she cooed. “Lucas, honey, are you OK?“

But, Janet didn’t need her four-year-old to verbalize any sort of response—a mother always knows when her child is that sick.

Lucas’s sandy ringlets were matted to his forehead like wet leaves, and he smelled like apple juice spilled in a hamper of dirty laundry.

“Mama?” His voice was so meek that it had the once-familiar timbre of his baby babbles before he was the walking, talking chatterbox he had become.

She peeled back the damp bedding and lifted her son, scooping him into her lap.

“My love, it seems like you must not be feeling well.” Her mind started to build an ad hoc decision tree. 

If only mothers could shapeshift into octopuses at will.

She imagined the benefits of having eight arms to do all of the zillions of things that were quickly piling onto her docket for the day. 

She glanced at her watch. 7:20 AM. 

Normally, Lucas would already be halfway done with breakfast and she would have packed his lunch for the day. She would be in her scrubs for her first shift and texting to confirm the plans with the babysitter for afternoon pickup after preschool. 

Today, the well-choreographed morning routine needed to be even more militant, as she finally had an interview on the books at a local apartment complex, months of application after application with no bites. 

Who knew getting a full-time PCA job would be so difficult? 

Janet had been planning to take advantage of the early drop-off hours at her son’s preschool so that she could sneak in the interview before her usual shift at the nursing home.

Now, she was not only behind schedule, but she had to abandon the schedule entirely and piece together a contingency plan.

It’s times like these I wish you hadn’t left me.

A few minutes later, Janet had one hand holding a thermometer under her son’s tongue, and another texting her neighbor, her son‘s babysitter, her own mother, anyone she could think of to be a pinch hitter.

Her mom was the first to respond, calling instead of texting.

Her mother‘s voice rang of concern muddled with stress.

“What’s going on?”

“Hey Mom, Lucas is sick and he can’t go to school today. I’m supposed to work this morning, but I also have that interview I was telling you about. I don’t know what to do with him.“ 

The urgency of her words made them tumble out with a rapidity that mirrored her rising pulse.

“Well, if he’s not super sick, I can come over and spend the morning with him, but I have an appointment this afternoon.”

“That’s great. That’s great. Don’t worry about the afternoon. I just have to get through the morning,” she paused, trying to problem-solve on the fly. “I’ll have to call out of work, but I really don’t want to miss this interview. You know how hard I’ve been working to try to get a stable job and this is the only place that’s actually called me back,” her strong voice began to waiver as she fell back into the comforting role of being a daughter rather than a single mother, struggling to make ends meet. “I need this job.”

Tears clung to her lashes, testing the bounds of surface tension. One sudden movement or one more droplet pooling in the eyelid would be a decisive whistleblower, allowing the full collection to cascade down her flushed cheeks.

“I know, honey. And you’re a shoo-in. You’d be perfect for that role. I don’t want you to worry. I just need a couple of minutes and I can be over there soon.”

Her mother’s encouraging words were interrupted by the high-pitched beeping of the thermometer, the audible feedback that instantly distinguishes a fever from normal body temperature. 

Her mom continued to talk while Janet silently clocked that Lucas’s temperature was 102.8.

Certainly a fever, but not dangerous.

“Try to stay calm. Get yourself ready for the interview. You need to be in a good head space.”

Janet forced a swallow past the mounting constriction in her throat, begging to hold back the emotional unraveling threatening to fully crack her composure.

The silence on her end of the line was the tacit language of a mother and daughter. Unspoken gratitude. Unspoken love. Unspoken reassurance.

Thank you. I love you, Mom.

I love you. It will be ok, honey.

Janet ended the call, taking one extra second to hold the phone up to her chest, as if transmitting the echoes of her mother’s words straight to her heart, feeling the hug she needed.

Then, she snapped into Mom mode, instinctively stripping Lucas of his soggy pajamas. She knew her mom would be happy to bathe him later on. For now, just a fresh pair of sweatpants and a clean T-shirt would suffice so that he wouldn’t get the chills. 

Fortunately, his fever was making him laconic, a welcome break from his usual unending string of morning questions: What’s for breakfast today, Mom? Is it shorts weather yet? Are dragons real? Do I have to finish my milk? Why don’t you have time to play with me? Where’s Daddy?

The last one always hung in the air unanswered, like the last quarter-inch of milk Lucas always refused to drink, her unspoken concession to him for not having the answer.

The other silver lining of the fever was that it stole his energy, making Lucas perfectly content to languish on the couch looking at a picture book while she got ready for her interview. 

Janet donned the blouse she had ironed by the light of the TV last night between bites of ramen that was no longer warm. 

Then, she dabbed her still-damp eyes with a cotton ball, and threw on a blush of makeup to shift from “Mom mode” to “Diligent-Worker-With-Plenty-of-Time-to-Devote-to-Your-Job mode.”

Janet looked out the window. Still no sign of Mom. 

Hurry up, Mom. I’m going to be late.

Then, she returned to the living room, where Lucas had dozed off to sleep, the book forming a tent over his face. She carefully extricated it from his listless fingers and lay a small blanket over his legs.

Then, Janet turned off the light so he could get some rest and moved to the kitchen where she could anxiously pace in circles while pleading to the universe to make her mom appear. 

Should I call Mr. Reed and tell him I’m running late or hope everything falls into place in time?

She pulled up Google Maps on her phone and rechecked the current traffic patterns and the estimated driving time… 11 minutes. 

If Mom comes now, I’ll still get there with four extra minutes.

Every car she heard nearing the house was the universe answering and then unanswering her prayers, a string of fakeouts that only added to her nerves.

With each passing minute, she volleyed the same dilemma back and forth in her mind—to call or not to call. 

In many ways, she knew it would be more professional to let him know that she was running a few minutes late, yet she was reluctant to do so.

Janet knew if she could make it on time, she could feign a level of impossible reliability—that she didn’t have a real life behind the scenes—one could and would sometimes get in the way of her job. 

There would be time to reveal her humanity; for now, she wanted to play the role of the unflappable, reliable superhero, not a single mom trying to work two jobs and raise a four-year-old kid while still feeling more like a kid than a mom herself.

Time seemed to be moving backward and lurching forward at the same time. 

Finally, the chain of mirages finally materialized into the actual oasis as her mom’s russet-colored station wagon pulled into the driveway.

Before her mom was even out of the car, Janet was running out the door, taking care to ease the screen door into position, so as not to wake Lucas with its snapping slam.

“Love you, Mom. You’re a lifesaver. Lucas is asleep on the couch,” she said while blowing a kiss and trying to get into her own car. “Give him a dose of Tylenol when he wakes up and see if you can get him to eat or drink something. I’ll touch base as soon as the interview is over. I might cancel my shift if I can get a sub.”

“Go, sweetie. Don’t worry about us here. I know how to take care of him. Just focus on your interview. Drive carefully,” she drew out the final two words as if making them last longer would inherently make them stick. “Slow yourself down. You’re going to be OK.”

“Thanks, Mom. I’ll be fine.”

The sound of her car engine starting roused Lucas inside. He flirted between a dream state and a lucid state, thinking that he would like pancakes for breakfast, that it was definitely shorts weather, that dragons were absolutely real because he was just riding one through a cloud, that he didn’t have to finish his milk, that mommy would be happy, and that daddy would come back soon. 

Janet’s mom waved goodbye and hustled inside, hoping that Lucas was still sleeping and would feel better soon, that her daughter would make it safely to the interview and get the job, and that her daughter’s life would be easier. 

Janet backed out of the driveway, praying that Lucas would feel better, that Tamara would be able to cover her morning shift, that her mother knew how much she loved her and still needed her, that traffic would be light, that she would make it to the interview in time, that she would get the job, that it would help her and her son have more stability, that her son would not feel the pain she did that his daddy abandoned them, and mostly, that her son would feel that she was enough.