You’re Gonna Miss It by Jen Eve Thorn

“Mom.” 

“Mom.”

“Mom!”

“Momma, look!”

“Mom!

“Look, Momma!”

“Look!”

My coffee will never be strong enough. I stir the pancake mix while the pan heats. A little bowl of concrete. The morning light is like weak tea, gray and uninspiring. I want to crawl into my coffee cup, curl my body up, and splash back into sleep.

“Mom!”

“Mom!”

“Mom, hurry.  Look!”

“Mom!”

How many breakfasts do I remember my mother cooking for me? Any? I run a finger under the faucet to catch a drop of water. I think of my mother’s red hair. I imagine her standing over the pan after her graveyard shift. The morning catching in her hair, finding her freckles. She’s so young. She’s so painfully young. The water rolls off her finger and hits the pan.

“Come IN HERE, Momma. You’re gonna miss it.”

“Baby, I’m making your pancakes. I’ll be there in a minute.”

I pour the batter in and watch it spread, find its own edges and pause there. Plates, silverware, syrup, butter. My robot arms are moving even as my battery runs down. How am I doing it? Look at me go, folks. I’m running on centrifugal force at this point; it’s just the history of pancakes stretching behind me that’s keeping my arms moving.

“MOMMA! Come see! Fast or you’re gonna miss it.”

Flip. 

“I’m almost done, baby.”

“But you’ll be too late, Momma. You’ll be too late.”

“Can you just tell me about it, baby? I’m almost done.” 

“It’s a live thing, momma. It’s a live, live some-thing. It’s crawling up my arm. It’s crawling.”

I drop the spatula. I walk around the corner into our small dining room. The morning has landed here in its full buttery warmth, kissing all the edges of his hair. He is sitting in his chair, holding out his arm to me, and crawling up his arm is a…a sort of…creature. It’s moving like a lizard but not a lizard. The wings on its back open as it senses me. They stretch open, translucent, the light from the window behind them filtering through. Benjamin holds his arm so still. 

“See, Momma? You see? You see this little guy?” my son says. 

And then the creature begins to sort of shake, and then its scales begin to sort of crack, and light begins appearing from between the cracks.

“Hello, little guy.” Benjamin says so softly. So gently. “It’s ok little guy.”

And then it kind of bursts or perhaps explodes, but softly, and its particles form a little cloud where it once perched on Benjamin’s arm.

“See, Momma,” he says, looking up at me through his fringe of perfect eyelashes.  “You almost missed it, Momma.”

And it’s true. I almost missed it. I almost missed it all.

Jen Eve Thorn is a writer living in San Diego, Ca with her husband and teenagers. She produced new plays for 18 years as the founder and recently retired Executive Artistic Director of MOXIE Theatre. She studied creative writing and theatre at the College of Santa Fe. She writes poetry, short & flash fiction and is working on her first novel.

20 December 2024