I often looked to the sky for the answers to all my problems. The sky – the moon, the stars and even the sun – were the few things constant in my life. My mom and I had always had a rocky relationship and the day I went to college was the day it ended. When I moved into the dorms and out of our apartment, I hadn’t realized our lease had been about to expire.
My mom told me a few weeks before she had renewed the lease so I didn’t think any more about it. Two weeks later, I got a call from the landlord about picking up the remaining furniture. If it stayed much longer, he was going to donate whatever was left. When I dialed my mom’s phone number, the only answer I got an automated message telling me her number was no longer in service.
“Maybe she just forgot to pay the bill this month,” I said out loud, all the time knowing it was the only bill she wouldn’t forget. When I finally made it out of class, I frantically drove the hour home wondering what I would find.
The landlord laid it all out for me when my key wouldn’t work in the lock on our apartment. My mother had moved out two days after I did and had left no forwarding address or phone number. Just disappeared from my life. Sadly, I had never been so happy to get someone out of my life.
Standing Room Only 