The Bad Mom

I was feeling pretty comfortable with the train system and had let my guard down by placing my backpack in the overhead rack. The train has a soothing rock that put me fast asleep, where my brain drifted to remember a bad day.

A typical day in our home was filled with playing and laughter until dinnertime when mom began to nervously clean the house before dad got home from work. We all scurried around to make the house look as if nobody had moved all day. In the summer mom would take us to the beach then hid all evidence and asked us not to tell dad where we had been. It was as if mom was having a secret love affair with the ocean. Mom felt guilty that dad was stuck at work and we were having fun, apparently she didn’t think dad approved of us having fun. When dad walked through the front door the air in the room shifted. My sisters and I hid in our bedrooms while mom hid in the kitchen making something she called dinner. Dad locked himself in his bedroom to cough. He would open the door surrounded by a cloud of smoke, like special effects in a Twisted Sister video. One Valentine’s Day dad came home in his usual bad mood, before he had a chance to go cough in his room mom handed him a velvet heart-shaped box of chocolates. Dad threw the box and yelled, “I told you, No Gifts!” He slammed the front door and sped away in his truck. My sisters and I ran out diving to the floor for the scattered chocolates like a piñata had been broken; the only thing broken was my mom’s heart.

The train pulled into the Venice station and woke me up. I got up and went to grab my backpack, but it was gone. I ran through the train searching for my bag, but it was nowhere to be found. I ran up to a conductor and frantically asked for his help. He walked me to the security station and I filed a report. They sent me to the police station to file a second report, neither of which did any good. The officer asked what I had in my bag. Junk, all that crap I had Dumpster dove for. In Paris I bought some vintage slips and cardigans from the flea market, a Rosary from the Vatican, a godfather T-shirt from Rome, a blanket from the Alps. The officer said I was lucky because I had all my documentation shoved down my pants. I don’t know if lucky is the word I would use, that crap meant a lot to me and would mean nothing to the thief. I sat on a dock and cried. I was really bummed out about it. I imagined the thief wearing my clothes, smoking my Capri cigarettes and stealing my identity like in the Madonna movie, Desperately Seeking Susan. I walked the banks of Venice, it was just how I imagined with roads replaced by canals, cars replaced by boats and of course singing gondola rides. With only the shirt on my back, and skirt on my ass; the fat of my inner thighs became raw from all the walking around. My solution was to purchase a pair of boxer brief shorts with the Statue of David’s penis printed on the crotch. I hope I don’t die today, my family would always wonder why I was wearing a penis. The philosopher, Nietzsche once said, “Worst things have happened to better people.” I needed to remember that, I focused on the things I do still have, like my life and the memories. Really my loss was just “baggage.”

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