For the Birds
Vivi Lamont grapples with the dark absurdity of her middle-aged life.
Vivi Lamont settled in on a tree branch high in the boughs of the park maple. She popped the lid on some canned chips and stared at the bird’s nest peeking among the leaves at her feet. It was empty. Maybe that mama bird had flown her coop, too.
For Vivi, it was the pee that had done it. She'd been all set to compete in a writing competition that Saturday, a rare slice of something just for herself in an otherwise overwhelming smorgasbord of responsibilities. But the first blow had come when she cracked an eye at midnight to peer at the prompts. Comedy. Three weeks after her father's funeral. Her initial reaction had been to mumble “fuuuuuuck” through her nighttime mouth guard. It was like the time when she was nine and her theater instructor had the class practice saying "my dog is dead" in a jovial tone and...yeah, her dog had actually just died. The instructor hadn't known, but still. Holy scheisse Minnelli.
Even so, she'd planned to soldier on. Her mama hadn't raised a quitter. On the contrary, she'd raised an eldest daughter. Vivi was born and bred like an Energizer Bunny, to take the hits and keep on going – for everyone else. America's problems could likely be solved if only the eldest daughters decided to unionize. But finding herself wrapped up in pee-soaked sheets must have thrown off the chemical balance of her battery.
Unzipping the backpack she’d brought along, she swapped the chips for a pint of Pardon My French Toast Ben and Jerry's. The cool sweetness soothed Vivi’s frayed nerves as she watched early morning cyclists and walkers breeze by on the park path below. A youth spent sneaking food into movie theaters had helped her pack well. She'd prized herself on getting the most unusual foods past the outrageously priced snack stand. Two variety bags of chips down her pants just looked like a big butt. Her highest achievement had been the iced mocha in the to-go cup that she'd successfully smuggled in her purse without spilling a single drop.
But the time for sneaking into movies with a giant Ziploc bag of popcorn shoved down her shirt had passed. All her life she’d been looking forward. Wondering which hunk she’d marry, how angelic her children would be, which career would hold her life-altering passion. And now? Now she woke up in a bed her kid had whizzed in.
Now she had the answers to those daydreams and they were all so very real. It’s not that she was miserable or ungrateful, but let’s just say there was a lot of coming to terms with the mess of reality versus the Disney goals she’d been spoon-fed. Not to mention reckoning with the fact that she was getting older than dirt in dog years. The newly forming dowager’s hump, the body aches that laughed in the face of ibuprofen, caring for one stubborn parent while grieving another, having the names Mom, Mommy, Mama, Mother, Ma, Ma, Ma hollered at her every five minutes, and was her freaking hairline starting to thin?!
Vivi plunged her spoon deeper into the pint and watched as her husband pedaled by down below on their eldest's old banana seat bike, no doubt on the lookout for her. He must have taken the kids to her in-laws. She felt a slight pang of guilt, both for skipping out on the morning routine and for the sore nuts he was sure to have later. But she quickly washed it down with a swig of the grande decaf iced mocha with soy milk and no whip she’d stashed in the side of her backpack. She’d left a note, after all. And she had earned her tree time.
She'd earned a moment to recall the thrill of freedom and possibility that can only come from shoving vegetable lo mein in a plastic bag in a purse and rushing past a teenaged movie theater ticket-taker. Or climbing a park tree in the early morning hours, shunning all worldly burdens and a bit of dignity as your forty-something joints protest and you pass more than a little gas.
A robin landed smoothly in her nest, eyeing Vivi warily before settling down to roost. Vivi sighed and readjusted her position, noting an all-too-familiar pressure in her bladder. One thing she hadn’t accounted for in her mad escapade was where to take a leak. One sneeze and she was done for.
Just as someone’s desperate need to go pee pee had started it all, it was urination that would end it, too. It was time to cut her losses on this little jaunt and head home. She’d never really abandon it all; she had just wanted a reminder that she was more than the sum of her responsibilities. And to eat a shit-ton of treats without a kid in her face asking for sharesies.
Vivi missed her little ones, anyway. Maybe not how they endlessly called upon her to “look at me!” before doing the strangest little jumps. Or how they filled every corner of the house with rocks, Barbie doll heads, and water bottles filled with questionable “potions.” But certainly how they snuggled up for a bedtime story, and pulled a laugh from her by asking Alexa to play the song Narwhal Eating a Bagel.
Vivi heard the tinkling of her husband’s bicycle bell off in the distance. She saluted the robin, who promptly crapped off the side of its nest. Steering clear of the bird’s drop zone, Vivi gathered her belongings and made her rickety way back down the tree. She’d figure things out, or make peace with the mess. Either way, she vowed to take her girls to the movies this weekend and begin their instruction in the art of theater snack sneaking.
This month’s story brought to you by the insane mental load of motherhood, and coffee. If you find yourself thinking about shoving chips down your pants, and want to fuel more fiction, there’s a ko-fi option below.
I’m honestly just glad you’re here, and I hope to be thanking all my early Substack subscribers in the acknowledgements of my very own novel one day. Cheers!