Corn Dogs in the Kitchen

“Mom, I really don’t know what to do anymore.”

Every cell in his body vibrated wildly. His fingers felt heavy and cold. He reached up to touch his face, and it was too warm. He unclenched his jaw and gave a deep sigh, trying to let out some of the jitters bouncing around inside.

“What’s wrong?”

“I can’t seem to make the right decision,” he said with exasperation. It felt good to get out, like letting steam free from a covered pot boiling too hot. She waited patiently for more, so he continued.

“Everything I try leads to failure. I'm sorry I couldn't do more, couldn't just be happy, find success and enjoy life in the ways you never got to. I’ve been taken advantage of, never taken seriously, hurt, kept in a constant state of struggle, full on survival mode for years at a time since you’ve been gone. Or something stupid will happen, like I give up on whatever endeavor I'm enduring just before the hard work pays off for someone else, or… everything I touch just gets destroyed. Do you have any idea how many businesses I worked for over the years that are useless to put on a resume because they closed shortly after I left working there? It’s bizarre. I think I lost myself, or at least the belief and confidence I once had in myself, that I'm a good person, somewhere along the way to here. I don’t know what to do now that I’ve found myself in this position. I don’t trust myself anymore. I just keep making things worse.”

He was at a simmer now. He could breathe again. 

He looked around at the humble kitchen, an old single wide trailer barely hanging on, gifted to us and hauled to our little flood zone lot because it had been infested with brown recluses so badly it was vacated by previous owners years prior. Can confirm—the recluses never left. 

A spider web caught his eye, spun in the corner, between the popcorn ceiling and the fake wood panel, just above the cross wall. The cross he made for his mom, his first stained glass piece, hung proudly there among the others. The yellow light from the warm incandescent bulb and dirty old light fixture cast an odd, off shade to everything, but he liked it that way. It felt like home.

The living room sat mostly in darkness, but he knew it was there. It was all as it should be. Old, creaky, falling apart, but technically still whole. If it ever was whole to begin with. 

He finally looked back at her. She was short, even sitting down. Her hair was blonde and all fluffy bangs feathered out, with a ponytail. No, wait. It was short and silvery. Curly. Her cheeks he once knew better than his own, looked drawn. Hooded lids that told him she needed more rest. Or maybe less. I worry she felt like she slept her life away. But her eyes, as always, bursting with love for me. Her miracle. 

It hurt so good to look at her face. It was hard, and he could really only focus on one detail at a time. The blue of her eyes. The closed-lipped smile because she didn’t want to show her teeth. The ones she had left. He remembered her pictures, then, the ones he'd seen of her in her younger years. A smile exactly like his own.

He looked down at his steaming corn dog, fresh from the microwave, but it turned his stomach. I once enjoyed these so much. But it was always the moments in the kitchen, in the middle of the night, sharing vulnerable truths with mom, that I really wanted. This.

“I think you’re still in there,” she encouraged. “That heart of gold still shines through, I know it,” she said with a smile, then picked up a corn dog and blew on it before taking the first bite.

The words rang hollow. This moment, these microwaved corn dogs on paper plates before them in the kitchen at midnight, it couldn’t be. This was a moment meant for another person. A simpler person. A… whole person. Not the broken mess that sat before her. 

He looked down and cracked each knuckle in his fingers, fighting back tears. He knew the truth. She waited patiently.

“My heart of gold was built on my fear of doing the wrong thing. Of hearing ‘no’ and being rejected. I don’t know who I am without my need to please others. I know you warned me not to be this way, to worry about my happiness first, and I’ve tried. But it still happened. There’s been nobody here to catch me if I do something wrong, say something wrong, if and when I become too much of a burden to the people around me. Life got really hard without you around, and I honestly think dad just wants to forget about us. He put away all your pictures, all our pictures, really. Last time we spoke was in the living room, just over there. He walked away from me and hasn’t looked back. That was… five years ago? Maybe? It’s the second time since you passed that we’ve gone five years without talking. Thirteen years without you... I’m sorry I couldn’t give you your wish. I know you wanted us to keep a good relationship, but he made me feel so small. So much of my life has, since you’ve been gone. My sister messaged me and said she had my baby chest with all my baby things and artwork I made that you kept for me, kept for the family I was supposed to have someday. I thought she wanted to make sure I got it back, since it was meant to be a family heirloom for me and I had no way to come back to get it when the water heater burst and dad wouldn't answer me so I just had to move away with no money and nowhere to go from there, so I thought he would keep that for me, at least. Of course, not. She wasn't trying to return the chest, she wanted to keep it. She just felt bad about throwing all my baby stuff away. I couldn't bear seeing it and had no place to keep it without the chest, my chest, so I let her throw it all away. I have nothing left of who I once was. But I’ve had some wonderful supporters, too. They’re just… not you. I don’t know what to expect out of anything anymore. I wish this moment could be real, that you could really be…”

She tried to speak, to interject before he spiraled, but she couldn’t. The trailer wobbled, but he willed it back. Now the trailer was older, perhaps what it’s remains look like today, much more decrepit even than before. 

Hollow. 

But he couldn’t leave yet. He’d only just now sat down with her, and it had been so long. He needed to hear something to cling to, to keep him going. A dream. 

This ratty old kitchen, he thought bitterly. Where dreams came to die. The last place his mother called home. The last place I felt at home. 

He felt it shifting, the kitchen he once despised, been embarrassed by, now a cherished, fleeting wish. Stay a little longer. But he couldn’t. One last look at her face, a soft, sad smile on her lips, just like she used to make. And it was over. 

His familiar morning alarm came into focus with a sharp crescendo, and then his eyes opened to the darkness of early morning. Time to get up and start all over again.