Raise your hand

Raise your hand if your mom’s dead. Raise your other if your dad is, too. Raise whatever other appendage you can if you’ve got dead parents with whom you wish you could have a few more words, a few more moments. Raise your ire if your dead parents raise your ire.

One morning, when I was 17 and full of zits and quasi-confidence and a lacking reality thereof, when my posse lingered in my kitchen, awaiting the trek to the high school, my pinnacle almost met, my younger brother’s yet to rise, the vortex between the two of us manifesting in my mother’s inability to mitigate the friction, which was unyielding, despite her, until her. She stepped between us.

“Stop.”

Lon moved to one side. Me to the other, her face to mine, which distracted me. She had a dimple, even when she was mad.

Lon’s left jabbed at me over Mom’s shoulder as she prepared to say something, mostly to me, Lon hoping she wouldn’t notice, knowing I would.

Blood came outta my nose, which I caught with a sleeve, ruining everything about my morning. The guys started exiting, including my ride.

I was murderous. (But only I could hurt my brothers, and they me. If anyone else tried, the three of us would … well … be a problem ….) I pressed toward my brother, fists clenched, blood running down my chin. My mother posted up, separating us, arms extended, hands pressed to our chests, looking at me under her eyelids.

“Don’t.” she said, and I didn’t.

Something clicked. Everything stopped. Even my adrenaline. Coming to the brink of physically confronting my mom was another level of deviance, since in my preceding 17 years, she’d never once betrayed her love for, and understanding of, me.

My brother handed me a towel. I nodded. We went to school. Didn’t stop loving each other.

That night my dad sat me down. Blue Oyster Cult on the radio. All our times have come …

“I heard about this morning.”

“I’m sorry, Dad.”

“I know.”

“I just — ”

“I said I know.”

He got up then and put his hand on my hair and looked at me like he really did know, not smiling. Then he left me there by myself, with myself.

Perhaps the single greatest bit of parenting I’ve ever experienced. Given or got.

Some things are not worth a raised hand.

And, a lot of things are. God, grant me the serenity and the wisdom to know the difference.

And, Mom and Dad: Come see me in my dreams.

Parnell Thill is a Cloquet-based author and marketing executive. Winner of a Minnesota Newspaper Association Better Newspaper Contest “Columnist of the Year” award in 2017, his book “Killing the Devil and Other Excellent Tricks” is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, local booksellers, the Pine Knot News office and at killingthedevil.com.