Motherly Love
by Jilly Gagnon
Of course I would never actually kill Mother. That goes without saying.
Sure, some people may find her voice shrill, piercing in a way that perversely lingers, repenetrating your consciousness for hours, even days after the fact, but to me, it's redolent of full-throated birdsong. Every time I hear a crow, or a seagull, or the sharp keening cry of a hunting buzzard, I think of dear Mother, and laugh quietly to myself, my eyelids twitching merrily at the memory of her cherished voice ringing, and ringing, and ringing in my ears.
by Jilly Gagnon
Of course I would never actually kill Mother. That goes without saying.
Sure, some people may find her voice shrill, piercing in a way that perversely lingers, repenetrating your consciousness for hours, even days after the fact, but to me, it's redolent of full-throated birdsong. Every time I hear a crow, or a seagull, or the sharp keening cry of a hunting buzzard, I think of dear Mother, and laugh quietly to myself, my eyelids twitching merrily at the memory of her cherished voice ringing, and ringing, and ringing in my ears.
The comparison is even more apt if the bird in question is being choked, though of course one loses a bit of the "full-throatedness" aforementioned.
So as you can see, if I were to go into a kitchen and see a multitude of potential weapons beyond the obvious, and rather vulgar knife-block, it wouldn't be with any intention of using them, at least not on Mother.
The idea that, instead of removing the lovingly arranged vegetables from each of the 20 kebab skewers I've spent the last hour constructing and reordering them, because Mother has decided that "putting the red and green next to each other looks ridiculous," I could use those same skewers as stand-in needles for a life-sized voodoo doll, is just an idle one. As is the subsequent thought that just the slightest slip of the hand might shove the end of one of them up a nearby beaky, harsh nose and, before anyone had time to react, into the soft-tissue at the front of the brain, if not killing, then at least effectively lobotomizing the unlucky accidental victim. And my laughter at the thought of all those mushrooms marching out of said nasal passage even as the victim – of chance, not intent – collapsed, is merely a reaction conditioned by such overexposure to violence that certain elements of it have become, tragically enough, comic to my generation.
Thoughts like that are just mental exercises, a sort of Pilates for my parietal lobe. Creative thinking of the "new uses for common objects" variety is, after all, a good way to keep the old noggin at its peak performance.
Bearing that in mind, the fact that I might occasionally wonder about what would happen if some of the strawberries Mother is so deathly allergic to accidentally got muddled into the lotion she makes me use on her feet, or about how easily the pen I'm holding could penetrate certain softer parts of her body if wielded with enough force, is clearly just my brain keeping itself fit.
Of course there would be certain situations in which I might have no choice but to kill Mother. If, for example, the Russian mob came in to collect a debt which, as an underemployed member of society (and isn't it so sweet of dear Mother to insist I live under her roof again, and not "be an idiot like I always am," to save what money I am making) I could never hope to pay, perhaps they would require me to kill my own mother in order to show me how deadly serious they are. If, for example, they told me that, unless I used the statue I'd made as a gift for Mother in kindergarten, the large, heavy one near the front door which she never fails to point out to visitors made her think "she'd whelped a halfwit," as the means of delivering a series of blunt-force traumas to Mother's head, they'd kill us both, anyway, and a helpless orphan to boot, brought along for the purpose of this very threat, well, I couldn't very well do anything but what they asked.
And of course if they offered a reasonable, easy-to-follow monthly payment plan, at a low rate of interest, so that everyone comes out a winner, I'd understand what they really meant by it.
But then, a situation like that is so unlikely as to be almost laughable, especially since Dmitri has never once yet returned any of my calls.
It's not all that unlikely, though, that she might have to check out the fusebox during an upcoming rainstorm, and, lo and behold, be subjected to a powerful charge of the electricity coming back on just as she reaches in with the screwdriver I suggested she use. Or that, hearing the sort of wet-sock flap of her snoring one of the nights I'm forced to share her bed, as my mattress is being aired, I might think it's my alarm and, sharpened pen in hand from when I fell asleep in the midst of my labors, attempt to "turn her off" rather heavily, just in the region of the heart and/or lungs. Things like that happen all the time.
But that doesn't mean anyone wants them to.
More funny than her writing is the fact that Jilly Gagnon thinks "freelance writer" is a real job - isn't it like dragon-slayer, or poison-taster, or some other totally anachronistic and fictional career? You can find her work at the Huffington Post, Vanity Fair online, and a host of blogs whose names you don't know, and you can find her humbly asking for your change at the bus shelter.
So as you can see, if I were to go into a kitchen and see a multitude of potential weapons beyond the obvious, and rather vulgar knife-block, it wouldn't be with any intention of using them, at least not on Mother.
The idea that, instead of removing the lovingly arranged vegetables from each of the 20 kebab skewers I've spent the last hour constructing and reordering them, because Mother has decided that "putting the red and green next to each other looks ridiculous," I could use those same skewers as stand-in needles for a life-sized voodoo doll, is just an idle one. As is the subsequent thought that just the slightest slip of the hand might shove the end of one of them up a nearby beaky, harsh nose and, before anyone had time to react, into the soft-tissue at the front of the brain, if not killing, then at least effectively lobotomizing the unlucky accidental victim. And my laughter at the thought of all those mushrooms marching out of said nasal passage even as the victim – of chance, not intent – collapsed, is merely a reaction conditioned by such overexposure to violence that certain elements of it have become, tragically enough, comic to my generation.
Thoughts like that are just mental exercises, a sort of Pilates for my parietal lobe. Creative thinking of the "new uses for common objects" variety is, after all, a good way to keep the old noggin at its peak performance.
Bearing that in mind, the fact that I might occasionally wonder about what would happen if some of the strawberries Mother is so deathly allergic to accidentally got muddled into the lotion she makes me use on her feet, or about how easily the pen I'm holding could penetrate certain softer parts of her body if wielded with enough force, is clearly just my brain keeping itself fit.
Of course there would be certain situations in which I might have no choice but to kill Mother. If, for example, the Russian mob came in to collect a debt which, as an underemployed member of society (and isn't it so sweet of dear Mother to insist I live under her roof again, and not "be an idiot like I always am," to save what money I am making) I could never hope to pay, perhaps they would require me to kill my own mother in order to show me how deadly serious they are. If, for example, they told me that, unless I used the statue I'd made as a gift for Mother in kindergarten, the large, heavy one near the front door which she never fails to point out to visitors made her think "she'd whelped a halfwit," as the means of delivering a series of blunt-force traumas to Mother's head, they'd kill us both, anyway, and a helpless orphan to boot, brought along for the purpose of this very threat, well, I couldn't very well do anything but what they asked.
And of course if they offered a reasonable, easy-to-follow monthly payment plan, at a low rate of interest, so that everyone comes out a winner, I'd understand what they really meant by it.
But then, a situation like that is so unlikely as to be almost laughable, especially since Dmitri has never once yet returned any of my calls.
It's not all that unlikely, though, that she might have to check out the fusebox during an upcoming rainstorm, and, lo and behold, be subjected to a powerful charge of the electricity coming back on just as she reaches in with the screwdriver I suggested she use. Or that, hearing the sort of wet-sock flap of her snoring one of the nights I'm forced to share her bed, as my mattress is being aired, I might think it's my alarm and, sharpened pen in hand from when I fell asleep in the midst of my labors, attempt to "turn her off" rather heavily, just in the region of the heart and/or lungs. Things like that happen all the time.
But that doesn't mean anyone wants them to.
More funny than her writing is the fact that Jilly Gagnon thinks "freelance writer" is a real job - isn't it like dragon-slayer, or poison-taster, or some other totally anachronistic and fictional career? You can find her work at the Huffington Post, Vanity Fair online, and a host of blogs whose names you don't know, and you can find her humbly asking for your change at the bus shelter.
That made me chuckle! Excellent work!
Posted by: Anton Gully | 04/03/2010 at 01:44 AM