After Barbara Adler
There are some kids
who are born knowing how to make their parents blush
proud at their every footfall.
Kids who burble out mama before their first birthday,
who can stupefy whole department stores
with their precious, pink-cheeked giggles.
Teachers describe them as
diligent and
well behaved.
They buy their parents thoughtful birthday presents
from the mall
with money saved from their allowance.
When they turn sixteen,
they do not pierce anything.
They get their driver’s license
so they can drive their kid brother to soccer practice.
I was not one of those kids.
I got weird looks so often at dinner parties
even the perfect pressed napkins
were embarrassed.
Girls with purple hair
wearing men’s clothing and
discussing the viability of communist economic theory
were an unusual occurrence at Markham’s supper tables.
As a teenager,
I got my back up so often
my mom was basically an amateur chiropractor,
she was always
adjusting.
If the chip on my adolescent shoulder
was a tourist attraction,
it would be located twenty kilometres off a freeway
in Northern Saskatchewan.
It would be the size of a football field,
there would be cheesy souvenir fanny packs and shot glasses,
it would be completely abandoned.
But there is no cure for a bad case of rebellion
like seeing your mom cry.
My mom once boycotted a grocery store for eleven years because
they refused to honour a price they had incorrectly posted
on boneless chicken breasts.
When she’d seen the markdown,
she had heaped package upon package of chicken breasts
into her cart,
and then when she triumphantly approached the register,
chest puffed out proudly
like a caveman who just took down a particularly tasty-looking moose to feed his family,
the orthodontically gifted and bepimpled teenage cashier
announced without inflection
that the chicken breasts were, “like
not on sale, or something”
as she scanned them through the checkout.
My mom,
all five-foot-eleven of her
seething,
asked to speak to the head cashier.
When the head cashier told my mom that there was nothing she could do
and that she “apologized for the inconvenience,”
she asked to speak to the store manager.
And when the store manager told my mom
that there was nothing he could do
and that he
“apologized for the inconvenience,”
my mom
just looked at him.
Then, with the disdain
typically reserved for
the kind of people who have tiny dogs or show up early for dinner parties,
she said:
“I will never shop at your store again.”
Fore more than a decade,
my mom steadfastly refused to shop there,
she said
it was the principle
of the thing.
But
it was also
the slow, encroaching humiliation
of being someone who couldn’t afford to pay full price
for chicken breasts
in our relentlessly upper middle-class suburban city,
which called itself a town,
as though it somehow gave our immaculately manicured streets
some charm.
It was was accident
of intellectual discovery
that lead my adolescent self to believe that a just society
was one that allocated resources
“to each, according to his needs —
form each, according to his abilities.”
Once,
I saw my mother crumble like dry day-old cookies,
face falling faster than the
shame taking root in my gut.
I don’t even remember what I asked for.
There are some kids
who are born knowing how to make their parents blush
proud at their every footfall.
I was never that kid.
I always asked for too much,
talked too much,
was too much myself, everywhere,
all the time,
there was never enough.
I just hope that my someday-daughter understands
(if she ever finds me weeping over chicken breasts in the freezer aisle)
that my tears are
not
because of her.
(Source: poetryisdead.ca)
• Poetry • Lisa Slater • link •