10.28.22

I want to write this book before it dies. Things are pulsing with life for this one moment and in the morning there will be something else. My mother is looking for a man who comes home at the end of the day and can eat a meal with her and have some conversation. She doesn't want someone who calls her baby before even meeting in person. In terms of race, the only kind of Asian she dates is Chinese. She's open to everybody else as long as he is taller than 5'10", stays in shape, and isn't the same age as our dad. As we're pulling out of the driveway she asks us if it would be safe or dangerous to date a man who works for the FBI. She says that everybody in his family works in some kind of security. Then she says she met a man who won't introduce her to his family because they are very traditional. She said it is very normal to introduce your girlfriend to your family but he disagreed. She ended it. She doesn't want to unintentionally become someone's mistress. Imagine, she tells me, you are dating some man and then you get a call from his wife. His wife says over the phone: I'm his wife and who are you? Wouldn't you just have a heart attack? This happened to her friend who also just started dating again, my mother tells us. Don't let it happen to you. Imagine you are having fun with someone and then you realize he is married and you are doing something illegal. My sister and I can't stop laughing at illegal. I remember that marriage is a legal contract. 

She also met a man who she told to lose weight. He also lied about his height, she said. At best he was 5'8". Through the entire conversation, she is weaving in and out of traffic. She asks me again if I need her to take me to the airport tomorrow. We are driving down Lemon Avenue and La Puente and Grand and Amar. No one here knows how to drive including my mother. I'm not sure when life became so ordinary. My mother still has time to be a woman, to have dinner with a man who loves her. I close my eyes and wish that and wish that for her. I think we are coming to the end of some story. We are rolling up to its end, as if to a stop light, and then gently passing through to the other side.