- Gemma -
The whole thing was completely surreal.
I mean, I didn’t know yet if being the boss of Pump’s Glenview location was my dream, but I certainly felt a lot closer to the other things I knew I wanted, things like financial security, job satisfaction, and improved benefits.
Unfortunately, my head was all over the place after I talked to Jimmy, which is why I asked if he’d hold down the fort while I bought lunch for everybody and considered how I would break the news.
When the time came, the words didn’t come out exactly as I’d rehearsed in the car. I engaged in more nervous hand-clutching than I planned, for instance, and looked at Alex more than I intended to, as the tangible support in his eyes felt like a much-needed crutch.
But I think I got the message across that I was honored to assume my new position. And much to my relief, the whole team seemed delighted, though I sensed that a lot of their enthusiasm stemmed from the fact that Mary was gone. Regardless, it still felt like a vote of confidence.
After toasting with our sodas (which funnily enough felt as naughty as drinking alcohol considering our profession), there was a contagious feeling of optimism amongst the team, which made me more determined than ever not to let them down.
It was a tricky challenge, though—going from being their pal to being their boss—and I knew it. The best I could hope for was that I’d done enough to earn their respect in the past that they would let me lead them into the future.
Naturally, I was conscious that I had to toe the line between carrying myself more professionally and not seeming too big for my britches, but I knew I wanted the team to sense my ambition out the gates.
I just wasn’t sure how.
But as I waited in line to buy lunch for the team that afternoon, wracking my brain for who I could channel as a muse, for who I could look to as the most confident, clear communicating person I’d ever met, it finally hit me…
I was two weeks from turning seven the day my mom left, but I remember it like it was yesterday. She’d been out of rehab for less than forty-eight hours, and her eyes were so clear, her speech so articulate. I remember thinking she wasn’t my real mom. Not the mom I was used to, anyway.
I was drawing all of us as a happy family on my blue Fisher Price easel, including the small puppy I not-so-secretly wanted for my birthday, when she called my dad and me into the sitting room and asked us to sit down. She had a small black suitcase by her feet, and her shoes were already on.
Then, as if she were explaining something as unemotional as the theory of gravity, she said she was leaving forever, that we’d never hear from her again, and that there was nothing we could say to change her mind.
Looking back, I wish I hadn’t just sat there listening. I wish I’d understood the gravity of the situation, that I’d had the wherewithal to realize what growing up without a mom would mean for me. For my dad.
But I was still half-convinced she was a robot, as her sobriety made her seem so foreign to me. So when my dad asked me to give them some privacy, I was relieved.
It never occurred to me that she would walk out without giving me a kiss goodbye.
That was the day I learned that just because somebody is supposed to love you doesn’t mean they can or will.
Even as an adult, I felt strangely detached from the whole thing, as if it wasn’t my mom that left that day, but the stranger she became after she broke her addiction to opioids.
It was an addiction that started innocently enough after she twisted her back one day while we were playing. It was the first time it ever occurred to me that I might be overweight.
I never figured out why I handled her leaving so well. Perhaps it was because, on some level, I knew my dad and I had enjoyed a peace we’d never known when she went to rehab. Yes, I felt guilty for thinking that, but I was only a kid. What kid would miss someone that spent all their time either yelling at them or ignoring them?
My dad didn’t take it as well, but that’s because he believed the woman he fell in love with was still in there, whereas I could barely remember that woman and therefore never held out such hope.
Still, that speech she gave in the sitting room was the most convincing show of confidence I’d ever seen from anyone. So, ironically, it was that same self-assuredness I aimed to channel when I told my friends and colleagues that I wouldn’t be abandoning them, that I would be fighting harder than ever to make the way they spent their days meaningful and enjoyable.
And I meant every word.
And it felt good.
In fact, it felt far better than abandoning them that morning had felt, which made me wonder if my mom ever regretted what she did, even for a moment.
Then again, I didn’t even know if she was alive.
All I knew was that I was, and like her, I’d been given a second chance to be there for my family.
And unlike her, I wasn’t going to blow it.