If you lose your mind can you find your mind again? Of course you can. That’s life! So … then it seemed as though your mom began a process of … well, really of killing herself. I mean, not killing herself, no, no, no, Swiv … that’s not what I’m saying … but in a sense killing off her self, so that … she couldn’t kill her physical self. In a sense, ending her life as she knew it. Not ending her actual life, of course, but … ending something inside herself in order to protect herself. Does that make sense? And that’s about survival.
Hooooooo … so where was I? Right, your mom met me in the lobby after Knipstja’s funeral. I remember thinking that she was so thin. But she had these skinny jeans. Stovepipes! And she had that cast on her arm! Remember, from falling off her bike that night when it was raining so hard. And she had these red blotches around her eyes. They were different than your Nike swooshes. I hugged her so tightly then, in the lobby … I felt her bones. I was afraid I’d break them. We sat down on one of the couches. Those stupid couches that were so soft you couldn’t get back up. I knew she was suffering, so deeply sad, so lost and so afraid. She was sad and she was afraid, but she wasn’t crazy, Swiv. I shouldn’t use that word, crazy, I know. She was fighting, fighting. She was fighting on the inside. Sometimes when we fight … sometimes we’re not fighting in quite the right way … we need to adjust our game. But still, the main thing is that we’re fighting … your mom’s a fighter. We’re all fighters. We’re a family of fighters. What can I say! And then she told me that she had been offered a part in a movie being shot in … some corner of Albania! I remember feeling very surprised by that but also thinking, Oh, great! That sounds interesting. Your mom needed to get back into life, back into work … it was something to look forward to and to focus on … well, I had mixed feelings about it but mostly I thought … good! What’s the worst thing that can happen? That’s what I thought then. Well … silly me.
And we talked about it for a long time that day. She talked about how hard it was to get roles now at her age, and being a woman … She told me about the movie, although she didn’t really know too much about it … But it was some European director, you know, and it could be a good break … could lead to other work. And she said she’d talked about it with you and your dad and her friends and it seemed to her like it was a good idea … She said you and your dad could go and visit her and stay with her there … not that they could afford it … it was summer so you didn’t have school … although you and school have always had a … tepid relationship. Anyway … and she said she’d only be gone for six weeks at the most. Well … it didn’t turn out quite that way … as we know … but in the lobby that day she was excited about it. Her eyes were … they were flashing again! It was just so good to see her excited about something, so I … I said good! Do it! It seemed like a good idea. Just … to keep working. And to go away for a while. So then … she went!
But strange things happened on that set … First of all, somebody took that cast off her arm … sawed it off … and it was too early, her arm hadn’t healed but the people there said no, she couldn’t have it on her arm in the movie … I remember her telling me that on the phone … she had somehow managed to get a signal on her phone … she was standing on a big hill when she told me that they’d taken the cast off … some farmer had taken her into his barn and sawed it off … and then later that day in a scene they were filming she had to use that hand, the one the cast had been on, to smack a bunch of mosquitoes on the wall … she used, you know, the heel of her hand … and it was still broken! That was very painful for her … very painful … But that was nothing in the scheme of things, that was only the beginning … It was so hard for me to communicate with her because the crew were off in a remote place … I don’t even know where, exactly … but in the north of Albania … It was hard for her to get her phone to work and I could never get through to her … even e-mail was touch and go.
Hoooooo, hmmmmm … so … well … that was a problem. Especially for you and your dad. I mean, I believe now that we … we adults in your life … that we didn’t pay close enough attention to you during that whole time. We were all so … there’s a low German word … I don’t know … we were in shock I guess … bedudtzt … that’s the word. That’s a good word, isn’t it! Goanst bedudtzt. Oba yo. Momo was gone … and we didn’t stop to think that you had also lost Momo … and she loved you so much. She always had such zany ideas … do you remember, Swiv? You were always going around with her on the bus to funny places … exploring … And then, really, you were left to your own devices … Your dad, I mean he took care of you when your mom was gone, he made meals and put you to bed and everything else … But he was in a fog of his own, and then his drinking was getting worse and worse by the minute while your mom was away, and he couldn’t reach her and she wasn’t calling, and we just didn’t know what was really happening. I remember coming to your place one evening and your dad was there on the back porch all wrapped up in a blanket … just staring off into space … smoking, smoking … always with a drink … always ice cubes clinking. His hands were so chapped from the cold because he couldn’t hold his cigarettes with mittens on … I remember thinking well, good, there are ice cubes in his drink! That will water it down at least. I sat with him and we talked a bit. I don’t even know if he was still going in to work … and I didn’t know where you were. Were you in your room? Or off playing with friends? I should have known where you were … I’m sorry, Swiv. I mean, I knew you were around. But I should have made it my business to talk with you, to … really talk with you! I’m very sorry about that … no, no, I know you’d say it wasn’t … but I’m telling you, okay? That’s … that’s what happened! Hooooooo …