Mom Cell
“Vesuvius” by Aaron Lelito
Now, I’m Mom Cell.
On the family group-me app I’m reduced even further to MC (short for Mom Cell). I wonder could I get any smaller.
MC: Hey, girls. Just wondering about you both? Dad and I went for a hike today and saw the yellow warblers in the trees. They try to hide but the neon yellow gives them away every time. So quick and beautiful.
Hey A: I’m good. Nothing new.
Hey L: I’m good, too. Not much going on.
Any further reduction and I might become just a molecule, maybe MM (Mom Molecule), existing on a thin piece of fragile glass under the lens of a microscope. I am the distilled waste product, not so much captured as separated or wrested from its elemental form to be used for something entirely different.
***
Pliny the Elder is credited for his encyclopedia-like writing about almost all of the natural world, and he is credited with simple theories of distillation, which is really just separating liquids from solids, heating such solids to the point where the separation begins. The process involves funneling columns attached to a still. The columns are meant to encourage the separation process by allowing for vapors to rise with the subsequent distillate returning to the still. Today, there are a number of distilleries and breweries named after Pliny, and you can even buy beer from a Russian brewery with the “Pliny the Elder” logo on the side. Pliny himself was a serious scholar who never married and had no children. He spent most of his time studying and writing. His nephew, Pliny the Younger, is the one typically remembered, but he wrote of his uncle and of his death. Apparently, Pliny the Elder received a letter from a friend asking for rescue from Pompeii as Mt. Vesuvius was erupting. Pliny’s own mother encouraged him to help with the rescue, so Pliny ordered a ship and set sail in an attempt to aid those who were trapped. He did not survive. His is one of the bodies encased in the hardened ash in Pompeii. The man credited for understanding and documenting boiling points, condensation, vapors, and distillates was killed and entombed by one of the world’s most violent, natural acts, ever.
***
I can’t even remember when I became Mom Cell, but it has been any number of years now. It’s strange, being called that, when for decades I was Hey Mom.
“Hey, Mom. What’s for dinner?”
“Hey, Mom. Where’s the Scotch Tape?”
“Hey, Mom. Did you get my shampoo?”
There was someone, someone before Hey Mom, but that was even longer ago and mostly I can’t remember her. She married Hey Dad at twenty and had Hey A at twenty-two and then Hey L a few years later. There wasn’t a whole lot of time for being anyone other than someone to someone else. But I try, sometimes, to see her, to remember what excited her, what she was good at. I remember she always liked laughing. She laughed with her friends, tossing carrot sticks at a napping friend in a crowded high school lunchroom. She cut her old blue jeans into shorts and listened to her dad fuss over the length, “Too short. Put some clothes on for heaven’s sake!” She laughed at ridiculous, old Jerry Lewis movies, his strained, contorted face singing off-key, screeching like a wounded animal, silly fun, really. She stayed out late in college and danced on floors sticky with old beer and sweat, the sour smell unfamiliar but sort of ok, crazy fun, really.
When you become a mother, you’re supposed to be more serious; you’re supposed to insist on nature hikes instead of toy stores, and vegetables instead of fries, and early bedtimes instead of late-night television, no fun, really. The role is a known one. It happens, and mostly no one sees it coming. Roles are absorbed; places are occupied. And homes are created as completely as if the process were a natural one. Cakes are baked in ovens to send a buttery smell throughout the rooms of two-story homes. Little art projects adorn refrigerator doors and careful beige walls are hung with tasteful pictures and brass candle sconces. Perfectly matched valances are situated overtop shiny glass windows. And the dancing girl is transformed. The whole process is nearly scientific in nature, changing one element to another. But no one prepares the girl’s heart. It is ignored, left encrusted with only hints of what it once was.
My family collected me into themselves, and our home became our receptacle. I was needed, called for, summoned to help. I was necessary, and I responded. I slid from my old life and dripped into the new one. I became Hey Mom.
***
Mom Cell knew the warblers wouldn’t be all that interesting, but she thought mentioning the birds might recall the family hikes to her girls (that’s what she always called them). Hey Dad added his own twist, “Hey, girly girls.” The girls complained and groaned on the hikes, but they always knew a trip into the small town next to the nature park held the promise of a visit to the gift shop and a cozy dinner by the stone fireplace in their favorite restaurant. There would be a kids’ menu with a small portion of spare ribs, thick gravy over mashed potatoes, and small plastic cups of applesauce. Hey Mom knew how the girls wanted that hike to end, how they were thinking of the $5.00 bill Hey Dad had given each of them on the car ride. Little Hey A would choose a tiny, glass animal, a cat this time, maybe. And she would hold it in her hand on the entire car ride home, dozing in the backseat but startling awake to glance again at the small, glass trinket. Then she would put it in her dollhouse, the one she got for Christmas, right next to the miniature sofa. Little Hey L would choose a small stuffed animal, the kind filled with plastic nubs. She already had an alligator, and she had tied a piece of string around the fake creature’s neck so she could lead it around as if on a leash. Hey Mom would stand in line while each daughter made her purchase. She would chip-in the extra if the little gift was a bit over the $5.00 limit. She knew her girls didn’t understand leaving some wiggle room in their $5.00 bill for the taxes. Mom Cell had hoped for a rekindling when she sent the warbler message.
***
About twenty years ago, Hey Mom and Hey Dad (still in their original forms) decided to move their laundry room to the basement. The original laundry room was small, housing a washer and dryer with only a single cabinet above the dryer containing the detergent, the dryer sheets, and a few old bottles of shoe polish used by Hey Dad for his church shoes. There was a short rod for hanging the occasional sweater too delicate for the dryer, or sometimes a much-loved stuffed animal dripped from the rod, waiting to be reclaimed by small hands. Little Hey A changed her Barbie’s clothes constantly and loved the idea that the tiny outfits were washed along the with family’s clothes. Hey A was already imagining just how smart Barbie would look in her fresh clothes. Hey Mom smiled at her little A’s excitement, so she cooperated and zipped the miniature outfits into a net bag and tossed them into the machine.
But the door from the garage opened right into the small laundry room, so anyone standing in front of either the washer or dryer (usually Hey Mom) was pushed into one machine or the other and was caught with a door knob in the back. A brief grunt was typically all it took, and the door was pulled back, releasing Hey Mom. But Hey Mom’s boiling point was high, so the inconvenience was tolerated for years until little Hey L, bolting in from hunting bears in the backyard, caught Hey Mom in the head as opposed to the back. The whole ensemble was removed, loaded onto wheeled dollies, rolled to the top of the basement stairs, and then walked down, one clunky set of wheels at a time. Hey Dad, with the help of a neighbor, took care of the relocation. It was a somewhat abrupt beginning to separation with Hey Mom descending the basement stairs daily. The original laundry room was painted a tasteful yellow. Beautiful black cabinets were added and a glossy wooden floor replaced the old vinyl. Framed photographs from Hey Mom and Hey Dad’s vacation to Europe were proudly nailed to the wall where lumpy stuffed toys once dangled from the scratched metal rod.
***
Solving such inconveniences made sense, and Hey Mom and Hey Dad had to think of convenience, didn’t they? After all, responsible homeownership meant considering anything that might present an obstacle to resale. The Heys had to consider their home as an investment, something they would one day sell, something that would make them a nice profit. They had to think and study hard. They had to think of things like bank accounts and investments. Real estate agents cautioned the young couple to consider “traffic flow” through their home. Hey Mom remembers doubting the advice (there were only the four Heys to consider, after all). But future buyers would see the problems. The hiccups in the Hey’s home would lower the resale value. “It’ll affect the bottom line,” the agents all said so. And certainly future buyers would see the problem with a door opening into such a small laundry room adorned with Barbie clothes. Funny how the two Heys had not considered that themselves. Hey Mom can’t seem to remember seeing any obstacles. All she saw, all she remembers, is standing in the nearly finished house with Hey Dad’s arms around her and two small daughters at their feet.
Hey Mom can’t quite recall when practical thinking got its grip, but she thinks it might date back to the laundry room door. She remembers when four-year-old Hey L tossed her color-and-wash doll into the old laundry room, closed the door, and waited for it to come out clean and ready for a recoloring. “Hey, Mom. When will my doll come out of there?” Hey Mom smiles at the memory but winces, too, and wonders if she accelerated her own transformation. Little Hey L began washing up after bear hunting without Hey Mom soaping her small hands, without Hey Mom feeling the slippery, tender skin between her own palms. Her little L was afraid of the basement, and her small voice vanished along with the banging door.
***
Hey Mom remembers her parents’ home and the loud activity that comes along with a house full of teenagers. She remembers four teenagers heating up and rising for separation. She saw it happening with her own girls. She saw them resist lingering at the dinner table to hear about Hey Dad’s workday or the latest book Hey Mom had read. She once told them the story of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and his ghostly appearance in the lawyer’s office. They were fascinated and eager to hear the story, “Is he a real ghost?” They studied Hey Mom’s face with their forks paused overtop the meatloaf, waiting for her to continue, hanging on her every word.
And Hey Mom used to cut out little articles from magazines or newspapers to read to her girls. Once she read a story about a woman who hated doing her laundry so much that she had to sometimes wear her husband’s underwear to work. “A true story,” she told them. “It has to be true; it was in the Reader’s Digest.” All the Heys laughed at the thought. But slowly, oh, so slowly, Hey A began to roll her eyes, chug her milk, and run upstairs to do her homework. Little Hey L, desperately wanting to seem older, began to mimic her sister, and she, too, abandoned the dinner table in favor of her own bedroom. Hey Mom clung mightily to the ritual. She insisted on family dinners, and she even used her good dishes (the ones with the swirling blue flowers around the edges) every Sunday at the real dining room table, not the kitchen table. She thought that might seem more special. She clipped her articles and made sure she had a good story to tell, but her girls had other ideas, and Hey Mom and Hey Dad, sipping their coffee at the long table, heard them upstairs whispering and laughing, talking about school and friends. The footsteps overhead were a welcome sound, so Hey Mom allowed her girls were growing up but just a bit, she assured herself.
***
Hey Mom, grew up with a kitchen phone on the wall of her parents’ house, and she recalls her own dad splicing an increasingly long phone cord to the old wall-mount phone, an attempt to provide his household of adolescents a chance to stretch to another room for a bit of privacy. Hey Mom remembers the vanilla-colored masking tape twining two or three cords together. Kitchen phones made sense, she thought, so that’s where the phone was installed in her and Hey Dad’s own home. Hey Mom saw it as a bit of kinship with her past, with the teenager in cut-offs and a long pony tail who argued with her brothers and sister for time on the phone.
So the Heys hung their own phone on the wall right above the small desk in the kitchen. The desk was always too short and too small to really be home to a chair, so there never was one there. Hey Mom smiles as she passes through the kitchen now and recalls a teenage Hey A sitting on top of the small desk, knees bent and bare feet tucked up, laughing and loud, talking with her friends, her own shorts a worrisome length. She remembers an especially loud conversation with a boy who wanted to take her to play paintball wars, “I’m afraid I’ll get bruises!” Hey A’s laughter lowered the family’s boiling point and left the rest of the Heys turning up the volume on the TV, straining to hear over her loud peels of obvious delight. Hey Mom remembers Hey Dad acting a bit silly as he strained to be heard above the giggles, “Hold it down out there! I can’t hear myself think! What are you doing, writing comedy?”
Hey Mom and Hey Dad still keep the old phone in the same spot, but it doesn’t work because the Heys have turned into the Cells. Hey A’s own children are fascinated by it. They yank the old receiver from its resting spot whenever they are over but are met by only silence. They usually try the old phone, saying something funny into it just as their parents are herding them out the door, nudging them toward the yellow room with the black cabinets, “I’ll have a pepperoni pizza, please.” Hey Mom sees Hey A being a mom, absorbing her own family, fretting when her little ones don’t mind right away, resisting the urge to give-in to their games. Hey Mom tries to help. She removes the phone from their curious hands but regrets the disappointed looks on the so-small faces. What harm really to linger and tease just a few minutes more even if a little inconvenient? It’s hard to tell a young mother such things.
***
Mom Cell remembers stretching a dollar back when she was Hey Mom. She wasn’t a Scrooge nor was she pretending to be; she was just cautious because the Heys were on track to becoming something different. Being Hey Mom meant managing such things as grocery and shopping money. Hey Mom’s daughters were not demanding, though. They were thrilled to find the occasional new trinket or new sweater on their beds after coming home from school. Hey Mom was a smart shopper, frequenting the clearance bins and discount racks around town, discovering a pair of soccer shorts for Hey A or a little rubber mermaid for Hey L. That’s all it took. The Hey daughters usually rode the bus home from school, meandering their way through the neighborhood, treasured artwork in hand, artwork too precious to risk damage in an already stuffed bookbag. Hey Mom knew when to expect them, and she always waited in the kitchen, not the basement, until she heard them clanging and rumbling into the house. “Take your things upstairs, please.” And they knew to expect a small trinket neatly, lovingly displayed on their beds. They knew because otherwise Hey Mom would have just let them deposit their bookbags by the door. It was the Heys’ own little language of surprise. If Hey Mom tries, she can still hear the rushed sound of feet exploding up the staircase, rattling every lamp and every picture.
***
There are so many glorious moments Hey Mom remembers, but sometimes she can’t let herself think too much. If she does, if she lingers too long in her memories, if she slows the dripping away of time, then she might remember when she insisted fifteen-year-old Hey A behave like an adult when she missed a Saturday morning track meet. Hey A was shocked and cried the day away when Hey Mom let her oversleep. Hey Mom had been awake but thought she should insist a young, teenage Hey A manage her time unassisted. Hey Mom resists the pull of that memory. She doesn’t want to look at Hey A in her shiny blue and gold uniform, her thick hair pulled back and tied with a gold ribbon. If she looks, she’ll see her rushing down the steps. She’ll hear her anger and see her tear-streaked face and puffy, red eyes. Hey Mom had read all the books about parenting an adolescent. “Let them stumble now and then,” the experts all agreed. There is a tugging sensation deep in Hey Mom’s chest when she recalls all the missed times she could have stroked her young Hey A’s thick hair, hair so wavy and full it was spread across a flowered pillow case as she slept. Hey Mom wishes she would have stood in the bedroom until her teenage A’s gorgeous eyes fluttered open and heavy yawns escaped her sleepy face. It seems strange, now, to Hey Mom, that she ever trusted a book instead of her own heart, that she ever thought such a disappointment wouldn’t encase her in the past and stick to her very soul.
Or Hey Mom might have to remember when she wanted Hey L to respect hard work and money, so the Heys didn’t buy her a plane ticket home for Thanksgiving. They didn’t rescue her from a lonely internship in a small town so far away. “Too expensive,” they told her. “You’ll be home for Christmas, anyway.” If Hey Mom could do it all over again, if it were possible to be the ascending vapor instead of the hardened residue, she would buy her the plane ticket. She’d greet her at the airport with a tight hug, and she’d listen to Hey L talk on and on about who she’d chatted with on the flight, about how early she’d gotten up to make it to the airport in time. And a young Hey L would come home and smell turkey cooking and cookies baking. She’d see her cozy bedroom and dump her suitcase in the middle of the floor; she’d leave her coat on the table top, and Hey Mom would smile and look away, unannoyed. She’d forget to scold.
***
Hey Mom feels the sting of memory and age as she opens and closes wrinkled eyelids against the tears. Dinner time was never in the overstuffed chairs where she and Hey Dad eat now, plates balanced on laps, news or ancient sitcoms blaring from the television. The Heys ate together most every evening at the small wooden table in the kitchen. Hey Mom always tried to have at least one thing each brown-haired daughter would eat. There were porkchops or a casserole for Hey Mom and Hey Dad, maybe a roast, sometimes spaghetti (all the Heys liked spaghetti). But there were also bowls of applesauce or mounds of mashed potatoes, and there was always a basket of warm rolls or biscuits. Hey Mom took care to sit the butter out in time for it to warm for easy spreading. She remembers the glass dish resting by the stove top for warmth. When Hey Mom blinks back the wetness, she can see Hey A piling her biscuit with butter and thick strawberry jam, chasing it with a big gulp of milk from her Flintstones’ drinking glass.
Lonely is an ugly word, one Hey Mom doesn’t like to consider. But she knows she must, especially as she sees her own aging mother alone, watching old westerns on TV to pass the day, rarely moving from her established chair, stacks of catalogues and boxes of tissues nearby. There is a steady stream of harsh sunlight that streaks through the room and across the chair. Hey Mom doesn’t think she would want the sun coming in like that, reminding her there is a busy world outside. She thinks she would prefer thick clouds as insulation against the loneliness. Right now, Hey Mom has Hey Dad but is left to imagine not.
The loneliness comes close when Hey Mom passes by Hey A and Hey L’s wedding photos. Hey A had just graduated from college and there wasn’t much money for an elegant wedding, but the Heys tried. They rented a party room, and Hey A and husband-to-be decorated it with strings of gold lights and balloons, and all the Heys laughed with the couple’s friends and jostled about hanging streamers and sweeping up the dance floor. The Heys even splurged on the wedding cake. It was fall, so there was rich chocolate cake, and Hey Mom and Hey A went together to taste the cakes and decide on whipped frosting or butter cream. Hey A chose butter cream because the orange and yellow flowers looked the prettiest against the thick frosting. Hey Mom bought her own dress off the clearance rack to make up for the more expensive cake. It’s what a mother does. But her girls’ gowns were stunning: a simple elegant ivory dress for Hey A, a tasteful but lacey strapless gown for Hey L. Gorgeous fall flowers in orange and burgundy for Hey A and an artsy, abundant bouquet of pale pinks and soft yellows for Hey L. Their husbands are equally stunning in black tuxes and navy-blue designer suits.
Hey L had a very organized wedding day with scheduled times for various activities. Hairdos were at 10:00am, manicures at noon, with photo sessions to begin at 4:30pm. Seven years separated the two weddings, and the Heys could afford such things by then. But Hey Mom looks at the photo and remembers why there is no picture of just her and her once-little Hey L. Hey Mom got the text from Hey L, reminding her it was picture time, that she was putting on her wedding dress. But Hey Mom resisted; she lingered with family and friends in the lobby of the hotel the Heys had rented. Hey Mom thought the whole affair had become too controlled. “Too fancy, over-the-top,” she said. So she resisted. She clung stubbornly and stayed in the lobby, delaying until the next message came. By then it was too late. She wasn’t with her Hey L and the other giggling girls as they pulled on their gowns and sprayed their hair one last time. There are lots of photos but not one of Hey Mom and Hey L. Hey L has a big, extended family, now, and they have parties for birthdays and holidays, even Valentine’s Day. Hey Mom never even thinks of Valentine’s Day as a reason to celebrate, but she wonders if a plane ticket at Thanksgiving or a photograph might have made a difference.
***
At first, the phone calls came. Hey A would call from her home and job two thousand miles away. Hey L would call from her internship twelve hundred miles away. The Heys had long since abandoned the beige kitchen phone. They went as high tech as they dared, installing all the Heys on the family plan. Small flip phones helped them make the crossover. Now, the original Heys have crossed even further over to smartphones. But phones in any form long ago stopped ringing. Instead, there are tiny messages contained in tiny gray boxes spilled across a tiny five-inch screen.
Happy Father’s Day!
Happy Mother’s Day!
Happy Birthday!
Hey Dad says we’ve all taken a step backwards, “This must be what it was like to get a telegram!” -- “Meet me at the train depot.” STOP. -- “I’ll be on the 4:00 to Durango.” STOP.
Hey Dad pretends he’s being clever, but Hey Mom knows how his heart sank three years ago when Hey A didn’t call on his birthday. Hey Mom saw him, all day long, with the small glass phone next to his chair, waiting. The originals are learning not to expect anything.
***
Pliny the Elder, the author of Historia Naturalis, mobilized about ten ships and 2500 rowers to come to the aid of his friends and family pinned down by the erupting Mt. Vesuvius. I feel sure his heart directed him to do it, for the blast and the heat and the fire had to be nearly too much to risk. Today, his skull is thought to be in the National Historical Museum of Medicine in Rome. It’s still being tested for authenticity, the body and head having been separated by an engineer who clawed Pliny from the ashes and eventually sold his body, jewels, and clothing. The unscrupulous engineer, for some reason, saw fit to donate the skull to the museum. The journalist, Andrea Cionci, says Pliny’s skull is “more or less forgotten in some corner.” Scientific forms of testing similar to those used to identify Otzi, the Ice Age Man, are being used to confirm whether or not it’s Pliny. It’s impossible to know until the skull’s teeth are compared to drawings and paintings rendered from the time. Isotope testing from the teeth could reveal similar isotopes from the soil of Pliny’s hometown. It might be him, but it will take time. Until then, no one knows for sure. And few care. His name continues to sell beer it seems, so that is something. I wonder how Pliny’s mother felt, knowing she had encouraged him to go. I hope she never saw his body under the hardened ash. I hope she found a way to her memories of him, a way where the hurting was smoothed over. I wonder if Otzi had a family or anyone who cared for him. Maybe. Probably. But who would know.
***
Pony tails are exchanged for short bobs, jean shorts become pants suits, late nights of dancing slowly morph into quiet evenings with TV and early bedtimes, and homes become museums with unknown occupants. And remembering is painful work. Hey Mom remembers too much. She remembers what it was like to exist so fully, to be something more than a short gray message.
Shawna Green is originally from a small Appalachian town in West Virginia where she grew up with her two brothers and a sister. Her blue-collar, working-class roots are often the source of many of her stories and continue to inspire her creative energy.
Shawna is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department for The Ohio State University. She has been teaching writing for nearly eighteen years and continues to enjoy sharing her passion and her stories. She has a Master of Arts degree in English and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Information Systems. Shawna worked as a software engineer for a number of years before returning to school to pursue her love of literature and writing and soon discovered the distance between the sciences and the literary was not as cavernous as she first imagined.
She now has a happy home in the classroom and in creative nonfiction. To that end, she has been aggressively pursuing her creative nonfiction work by joining a writing group, studying memoirs, and returning, once again, to the classroom as a student herself. Finding cohorts who share her interests and enthusiasm has been exciting and inspirational. Her discoveries have convinced her it’s time to share the stories of those she’s known, those she’s loved, and even those she’s perhaps feared.