On Sundays We Went to the Opera (short story)

 

We shopped for groceries at midnight.  At the 24-hour superstore, exuberant Caribbean and South American customers packed every aisle and line for Cuban bread just out of the oven and presented in pans and armfuls by the women who worked in the kitchen. In Miami, Christmas was festival 24 hours a day and celebrated as many days ahead of the holiday as possible.

I was in town for two weeks to visit my young adult children who I had not seen in a year, yet their icy reception at the airport made me gab nervously in the car about layovers in Los Angeles and Chicago after leaving Northern California 12 hours ago.  When I recommended grocery shopping, they hesitated. “But we need food. I don’t have a car, and you guys work during the day, so why not shop now?” I said, light-heartedly.   Chloe looked up from her cell phone, disapprovingly. She was beautiful 25-year-old woman with the figure of my youth, like a new seed—svelte on top and rounded at bottom- lazy brown eyes with the look of romance, and natural strawberry blond hair highlighted amber by the sun.  “It’ll be fun,” I said, smiling, hoping the nostalgia of recalling homecooked meals, searching for perfect ingredients, and anticipating those same dishes served hot on the dining room table would bring us closer. For a moment, it did.

At the store, we Googled local seasonal fruits and vegetables and went in search of avocado, corn, tomatoes, and eggplant. We picked up bags of green beans and peas grown by farmers in northern Florida, and felt for oranges firm to the touch, bright in color, and sweet and citrusy in smell.   I excitedly mentioned YouTube channels that taught me how to read food labels, avoid added sugars and salt, and research additives.  Chloe and James mentioned favorite meals like the meatloaf, chili, and tuna casserole I had cooked when they were young. 

 When James grabbed the red meat, I recommended healthier, organic, free-range options like ground turkey, chicken, or lamb. “James, this is better for you, and it won’t spike your high cholesterol if eaten in moderation,” I said to my son, pointing to ingredients on the 90% fat-free ground beef label. “I know, mom,” he said annoyed and walked away.  James was a large man now with a bad attitude and scowl on his beautiful oval face with big brown eyes and feathery brows that had once framed his smiling, contemplative, or questioning glances at me when he was young boy. Quicky dismissing any notion that my visit had anything to do with his bad mood. I attributed instead to his frustrations with at 27 living at home with his father, like his sister.   

Because my children had said they had no preferences for activities we would do together, I planned a meditative sound bath at a local park, an acapella Christmas concert at an old church, hikes in the Everglades, visits to Seminole and Miccosukee museums, dessert at a vegan bakery, and Judy Garland Christmas movie at an arthouse theatre in downtown Miami after my children said they had no preferences for the activities we did together.

Yet things were not going smoothly. On the way to the acapella concert the following night, the smell of gas in my daughter’s car gave me a headache. (My son had bowed out of the event after remembering a rock concert he was due to attend with friends that same night).   Confused as to how to handle the situation, I didn’t mention it at first. 

Chloe had become distant over the last couple of years, not returning my calls or answering my texts.  My pleas that she let me know what had changed between was answered with a curt “I need my space.” Desperate to heal the growing rift between us, I nagged her about her indifference. Eventually, I apologized for being emotionally abusive when she was young, a realization I arrived at after months of Googling reasons why adult children became estranged from their parents. Mothering, especially after my divorce, and when my children were still toddlers, had been solely about duty and responsibility.  Like my parents, I went into irrational, highly emotional fits when my children diverted from my daily goals of ensuring they grew up healthy and well-behaved.

“Chloe, do you smell gas?” I asked, softly, even though my head throbbed from the smell.

“My mechanic said it was the freon he put in the air conditioner to jump start the unit,” she said, coldly.

“Freon doesn’t’ smell like gas,” I continued, knowing that Chloe diverted issues she didn’t want to deal with.

“Here you go again. You are always right. Everything is about you, isn’t it... about you being right?” She snapped and stepped on the gas, breaking hard at the next stop light.

“Please be careful,” I said, holding onto my seat. “This smell can’t be good for your migraines, Chloe, and it’s making me dizzy,” I continued, my tone rising and voice getting louder. “At least let me take the car to the mechanic tomorrow, so he can look at it.”

“No, it’s my car.  I have my own mechanic. He said not to worry about it. Mind your own business,” she said, turning hard at the next corner.

“Just drop me of here,” I said after a long pause.

“Here?  Are you crazy? We’re a twenty-minute drive away. It’s dark out there.”

“I don’t fucking care. DON’T… FUCKING…CARE,” I stressed each word with relish, “I’d rather die a quick death out there than a slow death by fumes in here. Drop me off NOW,” I snapped and glared at her.  She took a sharp right turn of the main road and waited for me to get out of the car before she sped away. I lost it, but my guilt was eased by breathing in the salty ocean air.

Standing at the welcome sign to the city of Coral Gables, a lovely enclave of wealth and old Florida homes, with wide balconies, Bahama shutters, and green lawns with Royal Palms and flowering Hibiscus bushes lit by landscaping lights, I recalled once dreaming of moving to the Gables; instead, I moved out of the state.   

After my children left for college (their educations were financed by my lawyer ex-husband who still felt guilty about leaving his children to marry his secretary and to help raise her children), I left town, too, selling the small house I got in the divorce and moving to California.  My children had expected me to stay behind to guard their memories and traditions, but I gave everything away, including their Christmas ornaments. Running away was lifesaving. Ten years of single motherhood, with two teaching jobs, endless chores, financial problems, and daily stresses, made me anxious and overweight. After I left, guilt made me call and visit my children often, which was annoying to them and expensive for me (my salary as an online instructor only went so far).   

When Chloe came back for me that night, she begrudgingly said I could take the car to mechanic. We spent the rest of the night in silence. The next day, the mechanic found that a gas pump intended to recycle fumes back into the engine was loose and releasing dangerous fumes, including carbon monoxide, into the car’s cabin.  Even though I was angry at my daughter for her reckless oversight, I told her to be careful and left it at that, choosing not to risk the tenuous state of our relationship for the sake of a lecture.

In my family, estrangement (my father didn’t speak to his seven sons from three different marriages, and my mother didn’t speak to her eight siblings) felt like a low-grade fever, never worrisome enough to admit to or tend to until the holidays made someone’s absence glaring or funerals guilted estranged relatives to make quick appearances and quicker prayers for the deceased in hopes their grudges didn’t go beyond the walls of the funeral home.  I attributed my family’s history of discord to big personalities, narcissistic tendencies, larger-than-life dreams and demons, and pained pasts so big they couldn’t play out in their entirety in one lifetime.

Still, I was determined to fix things with my children even though my happy-go-lucky plans, heartfelt apologies, and lavish home-cooked meals felt contrived.  Deep down, I knew it was time to forgive myself my inadequate mothering even if my children didn’t forgive me for it, a fear that made me lock myself in the bathroom to bawl with my hands crossed over my mouth.   

Seven years of penance for my misdeeds and its ensuing bankruptcy brought on by the expenses of constant travel and costly rental stays (this time, the $1000 airfare fee, $2200 rental fee of the three bedrooms, two baths, and big backyard, and $1000 of miscellaneous expenses would take me the rest of the new year to pay off), was turning into self-punishment, if left unchecked lasted a lifetime with no redemption in sight: My parents had enacted the brutality of their childhood every day of mine.  The only antidote for their sins was for them to forgive their pasts, and to give me time and space to forgive and love them despite their imperfections; instead, they hounded me with anger and fear of more rejection so that eventually they died hating God, themselves, each other, and me. I was on track to repeat their mistakes if I didn’t let it go now.

Several days later, Chloe bowed out of the sound bath meditation I reserved at a local park. Even though I was disappointed, I didn’t mention it.  This time, I dragged my reluctant son to the event with a couple bottles of water and yoga mats I purchased earlier that day. After experiencing a cleansing, healing guided, sound bath with music, chant, and singing bowls in a cave in Joshua tree National Park last year, I wanted my children to experience the same thing. 

That night distractions abound from a loud birthday party at the gazebo next door, drizzling rain, and howling breezes that prevented my son and me from enjoying the host’s chants, and flute and Tibetan bowl playing.  Mostly, I worried the cool humidity would trigger my son’s asthma, which it did.  Later that night, I drove him to the emergency room with the same wheezing, tight, colicky cough he had had as a young boy.

“I’m sorry, James, I started with a shaky voice,” we should have left right away, but you should cover up; this type of weather isn’t good for you.

“I told you, I’m always hot,” my son said, pale, his breathing labored.

“I know, I know, but it’s the cold humidity that gets you.  That’s okay, you’ll feel better soon,” I said, nervously, softening my tone to a less accusatory one. Old anxious feelings I had felt when he was younger, and we drove to the emergency room to treat his asthma, bubbled to the surface. When I grabbed his hand, he pulled it away. I winced.   

“This might not be the right time to say this, but when you were growing up, I never hugged you, kissed you, or showed you love, especially when you needed it. I didn’t know how. I didn’t learn that in childhood. It’s no excuse. I should have figured it out sooner.   My point is… you don’t have to be like me: You don’t have to be angry.  You don’t have to make your parents’ mistakes.  I just want you to know that okay? I just want you to know that” I repeated, nervously. 

“I know, I know, mom,” he said, curled up on the passenger seat and looking pale and miserable. I gave him a worried glance and stepped on the gas.

We left the hospital after James got a steroid and nebulizing treatment to lessen the inflammation in his lungs.  As he slept, I stood at his doorstep and checked on him every fifteen minutes, following his rattling inhalation to the next labored exhalation, counting the seconds of his in-breath, and listening to the wheezing of his out-breath to determine whether it had subsided even the tiniest bit from his last breathing cycle, just like I did when he was a young boy.

In the kitchen, I boiled water for a cup of tea. As the kettle whistled, tears welled up in my eyes. Love’s most powerful expressions, I thought, were never fully grasped in the moment; like mists they blew over soaking lightly the cells of memory.   

My son and daughter could not love me now like I could not love my parents back then. My complex, pained, saddened, hateful, violent parents threatened, cussed, spit, bullied, hit, and screamed at me from Monday to Saturday. On Sunday, we went to the opera--always tragic, always cathartic. We sat in the orchestra seats even though we could not afford the prices, except my father took extra shifts at the leather factory where he worked during the opera season to pay for the tickets and to buy me a new dress for the event. After the performance, I ran to the bathroom, locked myself in a stall, and quietly shook and cried my eyes out. Afterwards, I was ready for Monday.