When my parents first told me they were selling their house, I was distraught.
That house was the only safe place I knew for a long time. It was the first house where I could close my bedroom door, where I wasn't terrified for what awaited me when I got home everyday after school. Where there was home cooked meals and people who believed me.
It took my parents moving to Chicago and buying a place a couple blocks from me to realize that home isn't a building. It's not a house. It's the people and even though this house isn't decorated the same as the old one and it's not structured the same, it feels like home. It feels safe and full of love.
"Holt honey." My moms voice comes from behind me, tenderly and soft.
I zip my gym bag closed with the clothes I wore to play ball with Vida in, having showered when Vida and I got here.
We've fallen into this routine. I meet Vida at school, we play ball, I walk her back home and stay for dinner.
"How are you feeling?" She asks, stepping into the room that's designated mine. "With the lawyers."
What she means is with Austin.
"Fine." I don't feel fine but I'm determined to manage this.
Besides I have an appointment with Dr. Trent tomorrow and a zoom call with Dr. Aldrich Saturday. Dr. Trent is my current therapist here and even though Dr. Aldrich focuses on adolescents I'm her one exception. But we only zoom once a month unless I'm having a particularly rough time. Recently we've bumped it to two times a month but I slipped in another call this week.
My mom glides across the floor, a gentle, elegant motion. I don't know how she can exude calmness all the time but it's one of the reasons I can be so at ease around her. Everything she does is quiet and she only seems to get quieter as the years pass. Her hand lands on my arm, warmth seeping into my skin from the contact.
"It'll be over it before we know it." She tells me.
I try to flash a smile, one that's easy and unaffected, the kind Drew used to hand out to everyone but I've never been very good at them. I can't hide my emotions as well as he could. Though I don't know if that particular trait is good or bad. Most people couldn't see that Drew was hurting.
"There's just a lot." I confess this small bit, not quite confirming that Austin has me rattled because it's not all Austin.
It's him but it's also no Blue and just this time of year. I should be enjoying myself but this is the point in the year that leads up to one of the worst days of my life. And every time we come to that particular day, I have an exceptionally difficult time.
Her arms open, pausing for a moment like she always does to give me a moment for what comes next. I'd like to think that I don't really need that moment of preamble anymore. Regardless though she does it, smiling warmly at me before I fold into her. She's still infused with lilac, wearing her hair shorter but it's still blond.
Her hand runs up and down my back, the other tucked around my head keeping me close. It's these moments, when it's just my mom and I and she's hugging me, these moments are the times when I can let go of everything. When I can relax.
"I love you Holt." She whispers, her warm breath meeting my ear.
"I love you too mom."
She takes a deep breath and just from the sound of it I can tell she's smiling. I can easily remember the first time I ever called her mom. Sitting at that restaurant that we both came to call our spot, Blue's head in my lap as I told her my biggest fear. That I was terrified to leave her because she was the only place I believed I was truly safe. But I wanted to go on Drew's trip, mostly because he wanted me to. And much like my mom and Birdie, I would have done anything for Drew. I owed them everything. Keeping him company on his trip was the least I could do, if I could hold myself together.
At the time it felt impossible but I had managed that trip better than I think any of us thought I would, myself included.
But we were seated in that restaurant and she told me she loved me. That no matter where I was if I needed her she'd be there. I'd been calling her mom in my head for weeks leading up to that point. Testing it out, trying to make it not sound so foreign. Trying to will the uncertainty out that it seemed laced with.
I knew I had to be the one to say it. Especially if I ever wanted it to be normal. And I did. I didn't want to introduce them as Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln forever. They were legally my parents but I wanted them to know, especially my mom, that emotionally they were too. That I believed them and trusted them, as best as I could anyway. And I desperately wanted to be their son, the one they deserved.
Mom cried. She cries a lot.
And ever since then I've never called her anything else.
