Dead Fit - 6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

I slept in until a little past seven on Sunday morning. When I finally dragged myself out of bed, I woofed down a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee, then joined my mom in our garage to help her with her volunteer work.

My mom belonged to the Red Hat Society, a group of middle age and senior women who performed community service projects throughout the community. She had been a member for almost as long as I could remember. During the years when she was working full time, her involvement was minimal – attending meetings and events here and there. But after my mom retired, her participation level increased. She was elected to be the Community Services Officer, a position she took seriously.

On an ongoing basis, my mom accepted donations of used kitchen appliances, clothing, electronics, and household items from friends and family. She stored these items in our garage, and then several times throughout the year, she and the other members of the Red Hat Society would donate these items to homeless shelters and military veterans organizations in the area.

I was proud of the work she did. I'm sure her efforts were much appreciated by the recipients of these goods. But the involvement that happened behind-the-scenes sometimes drove me crazy. Our garage was constantly crammed with other people's junk. And sometimes, I had the impression that people took advantage of my mom's generosity. Rather than donate items that could still be used, friends and family would use my mom's charity work to unload their unwanted junk.

Then there was the actual task of sorting the items so they could be donated to the appropriate organization. This was a big chore all of its own, and one that my father always seemed to successfully avoid. On these occasions, he would conveniently schedule a fishing trip with his old coworkers, leaving me stuck to help my mom with job. She could be a control freak when it came to making sure things were properly sorted. It was probably better for their marriage that my father didn't help out.

My mom looked up at me when I approached her. She was crouching down rummaging through a box of old clothes. “You were out late last night, honey.”

“Yea, mom, I had dinner with a friend, and then we walked around Belmont Shore looking at some of the shops.”

“Oh, is this a new friend,” she asked, hesitating just slightly when she said the word, “friend.”

“No, he's just a guy I know from the gym.”

“Oh, that's nice, honey,” my mom said, and then got right back to business. “So, here's how we're dividing the donations. We're going to separate stuff into three groups – clothes will be going to the Southeast Asian Refugee Center, books to the City's main library, and electronics and household appliances will be going to St. Theresa's Thrift Shop. Any stuff that doesn't fit into one of those categories can stay in the garage for the next round of donations.”

My mom assigned me a stack of 20 boxes full of random junk to sort. The first box was a mix of clothes and holiday decorations. Closely following the instructions she provided, I put the clothes into the appropriate pile and repacked the holiday decorations for a future donation. The first box took me almost half an hour to sort and I rolled my eyes realizing this project was going to take up the rest of my Sunday.

While we worked, I thought it would be a good time for us to have a sensitive conversation about something that had been weighing on my mind since dinner with Brian. The story of his father's reaction to Brian coming out made me want to find out if my own dad harbored similar feelings, but expressed them in a more subtle way.

“Mom, is it just me or has dad been more distant with me ever since he found out that I'm gay?”

My mom continued sorting and for a minute, I thought she was going to ignore my question. But then she said, “He doesn't love you any less, if that's what you're asking. It's just that he doesn't always know what to say to you.”

“It's not that I think he doesn't love me, mom. It just bothers me a little that he can't hold a conversation with me.”

“Well, you two have never really been all that close before.” She had me there. It was true, we had never been close. I guess I just wanted to hear some reassurance from her that he didn't think any differently of me, that he still approved of me, even if I didn't turn out exactly how he expected.

My mom continued, “I hope you give him a little time to get used to the idea of you being gay. He had a very conservative upbringing. Your grandfather had certain expectations of your father and one of them was simply to follow in the footsteps of his family, that is, to work in the crafts and trades. Your grandfather was married shortly out of high school, and growing up, that's what your father knew he would do, too. That's how he was raised, no deviation, just one path. It was different with me. I had a chance to explore the world and make choices right for me. My parents purposely tried to expose me to all different cultures and lifestyles. It was their way of reassuring me that they were going to accept me just the way I am. So all my life I have known people who were gay, or from foreign countries, or practiced different religions. Your father never had that benefit.”

“So if that's the case, why did you cry the night I told you I was gay,” I asked.

My mom stopped folding clothes just long enough to answer my question. “You're right, I did cry when you first told me, and now, I regret that I let you see me cry. But, I didn't cry because I was disappointed. I cried because I was sorry that you would face discrimination in your life. I was sorry that your adolescence was probably more of a struggle for you than for most teenagers. I was sorry that we couldn't have had the conversation sooner, so that you could always have someone to talk to. I was sorry for so many things, honey. But the one thing I wasn't sorry for was you telling me that you're gay.”

I felt a little lump in my throat. I always knew that's how she felt, but it was reassuring to hear the words come from her mouth. At least one of my parents was completely accepting of me. I would have hugged her, but we were both filthy with sweat and dust. Besides, she resumed her neck-breaking pace of folding clothes and any interruption would interfere with her quest to get the job done.

We continued sorting, taking a lunch break at noon, and then carried on with our work until early evening. By the time we were through, we had sorted 32 boxes of random donations and consolidated the items into large moving boxes labeled with the organization that would be receiving the items. The Southeast Asian Refugee Center received the most items – mainly children's clothes; the City's Main Library received the heaviest items – sets of encyclopedias from the previous millennium, academic text books, lusty romance novels; and St. Theresa's Thrift Shop received the junkiest items – appliances and electronics that were questionably usable.

We pushed the boxes back into the garage. The Red Hat ladies were scheduled to rent a Uhaul truck on Friday to pick up the boxes from our garage, then drop them off to the different organizations. I was grateful that I would be at work on Friday. The thought of middle aged women driving a Uhaul truck made me a little nervous to be on the streets.

As we headed back into the house to wash up and prepare for dinner, my mom said, “Honey, don't forget next weekend your father and I will be leaving for Phoenix.”

How could I possibly forget? My parents had been taking an annual pilgrimage to Phoenix in August ever since I was 16. It was their quality time together, free from their offspring. My dad used the time to golf at a few high-end courses, the only luxury in which he ever indulged in his life. Meanwhile, my mom would spend time in their timeshare condo, doing who knows what.

I never really understood their fascination with Phoenix. Their timeshare allowed them to choose any number of destinations, including exotic locales in Central America, the Caribbean, and Hawaii. But instead, they chose to use their timeshare hours for a vacation in the desert, surrounded by cactus and sweltering heat, in a state just a few hundred miles away from home.

“We're going to stay in Phoenix a bit longer this time – a little over two weeks. The Arts and Crafts Expo will be in Phoenix this year and I don't want to miss it. You can have some friends over while we're gone, but just don't have a big party, okay?”

“Okay, mom.” In all the years my parents left me, not once had I ever thrown a party in their absence. The thought never even crossed my mind. On occasion or two, I did have some friends stay over, but these could hardly be classified as parties.

If I had known what crazy adventure was in store for me while they were on vacation, I would have asked to go to Phoenix with them.