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-20- A Bigger Couch

Hannah "Birdie" Morrison

It was like a blow to the chest. I didn't even know how to process it. How to feel. What to do.

She's supposed to be invincible. She's my mom.

I curl into her side as we watch a movie, Erin and my dad here. My step dad grabbing himself and my dad another beer from the kitchen. Ava is off in two hours but I know she'll be coming too.

I take comfort in my family, even if it isn't conventional. We all love one another in our own way, and each one of us feels my mom's diagnosis. Each one of us is filled with the fear that it is attached to it.

I look to Erin as she sits beside me, laying her head on my shoulder. Her eyes as red and puffy as I'm sure mine are.

You always think it can't happen to you. All the terrible things in the world that exist. I've been living in naivety, I realize that now. First Owen, now my mom.

I'm not even friends with Owen, not really. The only reason I know him because of Drew and the fact that Drew and I are friends because of basketball. But even though I don't necessarily consider Owen my friend, what's happened to him has still hit me hard. The reality of it. How devastating it is. And I feel for him.

It's humbled me.

But my mom. The fact that she has cancer. That her future is unknown. The length of time she may or may not have. Whether she will be beat it or succumb to the illness and it's horrid ending. The idea that one day, possibly soon, I may not have a mom.

That, has broken me.

I feel the lump that's settled in my throat tighten again, threatening to spew out of me in a series of sobs. I don't bother holding it in, letting the emotions spill out, letting myself feel all of the devastation of the oncoming wave.

"Oh baby." My mom says, pulling me closer to her.

I cling to her like I'm a small child again. My mind cruelly asking "how many more times will you get to do this?" already. It just makes me cry harder and squeeze tighter.

I don't feel Erin leave my side but I am aware of my dad appearing beside me. He wraps his arms around me and probably my mom considering I can't let go of her.

"I'll be okay." My mom whispers in my ear.

Her hearts beating in my ear, thump...thump...thump...thump... it may be the first time I've ever actually listened to her heart. I want to memorize it.

I want to go back in time and erase all the times that I was ungrateful, that I made things difficult for my mom. I want to rewrite them, take the stress and worry off of her that I'm sure I caused at times. Mostly accidental. We have a great relationship but suddenly all I can think about are the bad memories and all the time I wasted being a silly child when I should have been appreciative that my mom was there and healthy and alive.

"It's okay Hannah." She kisses my hair, her warm breath penetrating my locks and warming my scalp.

Her using my name makes a sob burst out of me because I realize I don't even remember the last time someone called me by it. That my mom named me Hannah after a doll she had growing up that she loved and carried everywhere with her. That her doll was what got her through some of the toughest periods in her life, growing up in poverty, in a biracial household when society wasn't that accepting of it. She's told me stories, she's told me how she didn't fit in with the white kids because she was too black and she didn't fit in with the black kids because she was too white. But Hannah had always been there to bring her comfort.

Until a girl that had befriended my mom during grade school had stolen the doll. And even though my mom knew it had happened, that this girl had it, white privilege had won out. At that moment my mom wasn't white, she wasn't even half white.

"I love you." I cry, burying myself deeper into her arms.

"I love you baby." She tells me.

"We're gonna get through this, just like we get through everything." My dad says. "Your mom's already got a team of doctors, we've got Ava and Barry and you and Erin have each other. We're going to be just fine."

He doesn't believe himself. He's just as uncertain as the rest of us but he's being a good dad, a supportive ex-husband. A pillar of strength. He's being a man.

It takes a few minutes for my breathing to return to normal and the tears to stop flowing in relentless streams but I eventually uncurl myself, still wedged between my mom and dad. Erin's legs draped over my dad's as she hugs the arm that's wrapped around her, Barry beside my mom. We barely fit on the one couch but no one goes to move.

My shoulders are pinched together, my dad's body an unmoving brick beside me and I can tell my mom's just as smashed as I am. And I can't help but wonder how we're going to fit Ava on the couch too when she gets here. We're all transfixed on the TV, tired, emotionally drained for the moment. But I'm becoming more and more uncomfortable. One of us should just move, but these people are my family. The people I hold dearest to my heart and I want them close. All the time, forever. But especially at a time like this.

So I don't move, instead I offer the only possible solution.

"We need a bigger couch."

                                ————————

Holy cow. This is chapter 20. How'd that happen so fast?

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