The Magnolia Chronicles: Adventures in Modern Dating(2)

"Right, because I never do that." I gestured to the Zen room, the robes. "Never ever."

"Stop it," she chided. "You know what I mean. You work at your business, you work at your friendships, and you work at giving your dog a life of extraordinary comfort."

"Being the best dog mom is my most important job," I replied.

After a decade-long sigh, she continued, "I want you to commit to caring for yourself this year. I know you've had a difficult run with boys but I want you to give it a real shot this time."

"What do you mean, a real shot?" I sputtered. "I have given it real shots. Lots of shots. So many shots." I channeled my frustration into shaking my head hard enough to make myself dizzy. "I've put myself out there, Mom."

"You have," she said, a bucket of hesitance in her voice. "But—and don't bite my head off here—I don't think you were trying."

Everything I'd said about tolerating her extra-strength mothering was a lie and I wanted those statements struck from the record.

Not trying.

Not trying.

Was she fucking kidding me?

For fuck's sake, not trying?

"I doubt you see it that way," she said carefully.

I hit her with an uh, you think so? glare.

"And that's because you're not seeing it from my perspective, Mag. You aren't seeing yourself the way I do—beautiful, smart, amazing—and you aren't choosing men who see that either. You are choosing men who walk all over your kindness and abuse your generous spirit and treat you like you're disposable. Like a damn plastic straw." She wagged a finger at me.

Oh, great. Now it's the Big Ask and some Big Trouble. "Mom—"

"No," she shot back. "You are not a plastic straw, my girl. You're compostable."

I laughed before the tears started pouring down my face. That was the proper order of operations. If I didn't lead with laughter, I'd drown in my weak, tender spots. I knew this because I'd drowned there before.

"Compostable?" I asked, sniffling. "Like eggshells and apple cores?"

"Don't start with the eggshells," she replied. "You're no eggshell. You're tough like potato peels and artichoke leaves."

I thumbed open my imaginary notebook, pulled an imaginary pencil from behind my ear. "December twenty-eighth, the day my mother referred to me as a potato peel."

"So dramatic," she murmured.

"Please. Ash is the dramatic one."

"Your brother is moody," she argued. "Ash is temperamental, Linden is introverted, and you are, on occasion, dramatic."

Yes, my brothers and I were named after trees. I got off easy with Lynn as my middle name in honor of my great-grandmother but Ash Indigo and Linden Wolf got screwed. That was how it went with hippie parents.

They'd missed out on the Summer of Love but that hadn't stopped my parents from living the hippie life. They'd had the VW van, the long hair, the peace, the love, and the weed. And then they'd found three heartbeats.

I didn't know the precise sequence of events that followed but I knew my father cut his hair, took a job as a mail clerk, and started night school a few months before we were born. My mother had stayed home with us when we were babies before Mrs. Santillian became everyone's favorite substitute teacher in the New Bedford Public School district.

But they never abandoned their hippie lives, not all the way. They'd championed organic farming long before it was a widespread practice and when we'd moved from an apartment to a single family home, they commandeered the entire backyard for that purpose. My dad was an accountant now and—rather unbelievably—enjoyed the shit out of the tax code. And he still drove the VW van.

My mother tapped my wrist. "I've known each of you since the first time I saw your little faces on the sonogram. I knew who you were."

The fourteen-year-old version of me wanted to argue with this because how could she possibly know me before I knew myself? The thirty-four-year-old version knew how to pick battles.

"What do you propose I do with my dramatic potato peel self, Mother?"

She took a sip of her water, then another. Oh, this was going to be good. No other reason to stall for an entire minute. I glanced at the clock. I hadn't paid attention to the day's spa service itinerary, but I was certain we were due to start with some seaweed masks or pumpkin baths or salt rubs by now.

But I wouldn't put it past my mother to book an hour in the Zen room specifically for this conversation.

"I want you to let me set you up on some online dating sites," she said. "I'll pick out the photos and write the little descriptions, and I'll help you screen the matches." She tipped her head to the side. "I'll screen all of them if you'd like, but I figured you'd want a hand in this."

"Oh, I'll help," I replied. "I don't want to subject you to all those penises because there are going to be penises, Mom."

"Pfft." She waved a hand at me. "I've seen plenty of penises, thank you. I married a man, and I raised two sons. For years, I couldn't go a day without seeing at least two penises. Years, Magnolia. I doubt you remember it but your brothers would just whip those things out. It didn't matter if we were at the park or in the middle of the grocery store or Sunday mass." She made an exasperated sound, shook her head. "Penises are nothing new to me."