Maybe, YES!

The YES Within™

My mother pirouetted into the bedroom. "Dahling sugar-lump pie, breakfast is served." She always entered in some grand sort of manner, be it bursting through the doors in the style of a soap opera, or dramatic tip-toe creeping in the style of a horror film.

She always had a smile plastered across her face like a beauty pageant hopeful. The smile, I surmise, was to make me feel at ease. It did not. In fact, it left me feeling deeply unsettled. A few years back she'd had abnormally white porcelain veneers put on as part of her midlife crisis, and because she was now regularly self-tanning too, also due to aforementioned mid-life crisis, she looked positively paranormal. I'd never tell her that though. She was trying very hard I guess.

And every morning the list of endearments was becoming longer and more complicated. Yesterday she'd called me honey-muffin, and the day before that, little possum. This had been going on for a week already and I was starting to wonder if she'd found a book somewhere, Terms of Endearments for the Invalid. I secretly hoped that I might find the book and burn it.

She opened my curtains dramatically and the sun blasted in. "Isn't it divine," she said inhaling deeply, as if beams of photons had some kind of a scent. "Oaky-doaky," she said helping me sit up, taking care not to bump my still-bruised ribs. She propped a pillow behind my head, smoothed the duvet straight and placed the breakfast tray on my lap.

"It's a Turmeric Sunrise." She held the tall glass of thick orange goop up and smiled at it as if it were an Oscar. "Turmeric root, ginger root, celery, apple and pear. Yum-yum." She would always round off the description of the juice with a yum-yum, as if she was trying to convince me. Unfortunately, no amount of rounding off would change the fact that it was as palatable as thick, black motor oil.

The juicing was also part of the mid-life crisis, which had seen her dump my father and get together with a retired pro-athlete turned motivational speaker named Jeff. I couldn't blame my mother for dumping Dad. I don't know how she put up with him for so long, but what I do blame her for is marrying the world's more enthusiastic man. Even the name Jeff sounds enthusiastic. It seemed like a name that demanded an exclamation point: Jeff!

Jeff! believed that all problems could be solved with a "YES can do™" attitude, a good dose of exercise and drinking unnatural amounts of blended broccoli. He was currently writing a book on his latest theory of YES-ology™. I know this because he comes into my room every day to read me a new chapter in hopes that I might draw inspiration from "The YES Within™."

"Jeff says it will help with the..." my mother stopped herself mid sentence. She hadn't once said the word out loud. In fact, she hadn't said the word once throughout her entire marriage to my father. "And here are your meds, muffin." She pulled out the small petty cash box and unlocked it with the key she kept around her neck-one of the many precautions she was taking.

"Righty-o." She pulled out the collection of boxes, packets and jars and laid them out on the tray in front of me. She put on her reading glasses and studied the labels carefully, reading over them twice just to be sure of the dosages; antidepressants, antipsychotics, anti-epileptics, anti-anxiety, anti-inflammatory, antibiotics, and cold-pressed organic cod liver oil. The latter was Jeff's! suggestion.

The pills covered my entire palm, and were too many to take at once. So one by one I put them into my mouth and washed them down with the thick, sludgy goop, opening my mouth in between swallows for my mother to inspect.

"You know doll, I should send you to Dr. Pilay for a consultation. He could have your teeth whitened by up to three shades, at least."

I nodded. She did this almost every morning. She'd done it my whole life, found something to criticize. Although she didn't call it criticism of course, she was "just trying to help." Yesterday it was my split ends and hair color; she had to get me to Fabio (he's a miracle worker you know) and the day before that, my cuticles.

"Here we go, as promised." She took a little bottle of something out of her pocket and held it in the air triumphantly, again like she'd won an Oscar. "Apricot oil, excellent for cuticles."

I nodded.

"Perhaps you could use it on your split-ends too... "I'll phone Fabio later and ask, he's a miracle worker you know."

"So I've heard," I said dryly, trying not to choke on the chunk of ginger that had lodged itself in my throat.

"Wakey, wakey rise and YES Time™." Jeff! power marched into my room and clapped his hands together as if he was in an aerobics class. His teeth were even whiter than my mother's, if that was even possible, and his skin was a frightening shade of orange.

"How's the patient doing today, hey?" He asked me this every morning and my response was always the same. Remind me, isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

I nodded, just like I did every day. My throat still hurt from the pipe and to be honest, I was using it as an excuse to say as little as possible.

A general silence descended on the room. They both stared at me expectantly. I knew what was coming. "So...do you think we can get out of bed today? Just a little bit?" I loved how my mother was using the collective we, as if she was somehow also recovering. She cocked her head and smiled, which seemed to be Jeff's! cue to widen his, so that his face looked like it might split in two. In their world, it seemed at least, sitting around and doing nothing was the ultimate crime. This was evident by the action-packed days they spent in Sunny Park Retirement Community.

Sunrise Chi-Yoga-lates followed by book club, lawn tennis, aqua aerobics, bridge, pottery class and movie night. Sunny Park was the premium retirement community in South Africa, they were fond of telling me. To be honest I hadn't seen it. I'd been in a semi-conscious state when I'd arrived and for the past week I'd been convalescing in the spare bedroom upstairs.

The spare bedroom, I must quickly tell you, is a strange and fascinating place. It seems to be more of a shine to Jeff's! magnificence than anything else. Row upon row of shiny gold statuettes and trophies stared down at me. They bore into me with their molded gold pit eyes and I couldn't help wondering if they're judging me. Mocking me for my failures. There are large framed glass boxes containing the team shirts that Jeff! wore when winning the various competitions. There was also a South African Olympics team tracksuit in a frame alongside two Olympic Gold medals.

He was pretty big in his day. I know this thanks to the countless framed newspaper articles about him that seem to take up all the other spare space. The bookshelf too contains some of his books, an autobiography he wrote after retiring, his first motivational book entitled Do Now, Not Tomorrow™ and his second one called, The Time is Now™. It is obvious that Jeff! had moved on from the now, and is now very much In The YES™.

Four eyes still looked expectantly at me.

"No, I don't want to get up." I pushed the tray away and lay back down, pulling the duvet up over my shoulders.

"Katie." My mom moved to sit on my bed. "At some stage you're going to have to get out of bed. Besides, some sunshine would do you good."

And if I wasn't already drowning in enough sickening platitudes already, Jeff! moved in.

"Your mom's right you know. Why don't you think of 'Turning that No into YES!™'."

I pulled the duvet over my head now. There was nothing else I could do. They would never understand with their happy, porcelain, Colgate white bright smiles. With their fancy electric toothbrushes with oscillating, vibrating and multi-directional rotating bristles for the hard to reach places. Their nutritionally balanced, vitamin enhanced, fat-free, low-fat, high-fiber, low-carb vegan juice blends. Their perfect, happy world were "whites stayed white and the brights stayed bright." Their enthusiastic fist-pumping aerobics sessions, their anti-depressant free happiness and Jeff's ten thousand uses for the word YES™. They would never understand.

"Maybe tomorrow, sweetie," my mother said, planting a kiss on the top of my head before leaving the room.

Maybe tomorrow?

If my fucking plan had worked like it was supposed to, there would have been no more tomorrows.