Pinkston

I'm not a Mom yet, but I imagine if I was, I'd be better with everyone else's kids than my own. My own wouldn't bother listening to me. They'd pull me into one of their long-winded arguments and know I'd end up saying yes anyways.

"Yes! Fine! I'm getting you Chick-Fil-A, dang it!"

I can hear us in the car now. The evening sky a dusty orange-rose, everything else blue. It would feel like deja vu, the same sky that a certain Michelle Pinkston and I drove under, somewhere in Vienna, WV, long ago, before I started my career and suddenly moved back to Houston. Before I really took care of their grandfather and truly lived it up in Houston. Before I fell in love with their Dad and became their Mom. And how could I say no to those chubby cheeks and chubby fists? 

I'm not even in that future, because tonight? Tonight, I rode along in Michelle Pinkston's car for a matinee showing of the Fantastic 4. She picked me up and dropped me home because yes, my car is still in the body shop. :( Now the movie was sooo good. Michelle has 2 grand-children and they are the cutest. They fight the way my little sister and I used to fight and just overhearing them, made me laugh hard. as. hell. It was too much of Yen and I.

The younger one, "Oh my god, did you step out there barefoot??"

The older one responded, "Yes."

"But there are so many diseases out there!"

The older one didn't hesitate, "YOU'RE a disease."

"Oh!"

And I laughed so, so hard in the front seat. Oh. My. Gosh, repeating softly as if I had been the one to say it, "you're a disease..." T___T

How did Yen and I ever mellow out to who we are today, because she and I were too much back then. We fought all the time, talked all the time. We were too much. All we wanted was to be good in front of strangers, but in private, I was a mean older sister too. T__T It made me adore Yen even more, for dealing with me and all my moods. For being persistent and persistently warm. >-< And always wanting to braid my hair ahh.

Sigh. Oh gosh. 

Anyways, this isn't really an episode. It won't be. It's just a vibe, that I have tonight.

Michelle is soft-spoken, incredibly patient. Incredibly kind woman, who sincerely spends lots of lovely money on her grandchildren and her kids. She isn't fully appreciated, but she is a stellar grandmother. Unable to say no to those darn grandkids and I get it. I'd have a hard time saying no to them too.

I just want a childhood to feel like a childhood, you know? Where everything feels easy, even when it's not. When your mother suddenly has an inspiration to buy clip-on jewelry from the 99 cent store when you're 6, so you can look all magical at a family's wedding, in the middle of the night, at 10 pm. 

I remember the late night drives back from Bellaire, with my Dad in the drivers' seat, no matter how drunk. Taking the wheel, and always convincing my mother that he's not too drunk, that in fact, the alcohol is making him even more alert. My little self believed all of it. 

I always felt safe, even with him drunk-driving. But he didn't lie. He never swerved, never sped up, never drove too slow when drunk. It was a perfect medium.

There's something so lovely being a passenger, not the driver haha, at night. That's when I feel like my mind's opened up. That's when I feel transported to that sweet time when everything still felt safe, when I felt like a small bean.

Perhaps that's why I always insist to my dates, even when yes, I do love to drive that I love being passenger princess. It reminds me of that time, when I didn't have to be big bean yet. When I could just hold onto an arm and curl up and make it home safe. Of course, I'm not going to trust just any nice guy. I want to trust the right one.

Tonight wasn't exactly that, because I prodded Michelle with questions. Prodded the little girls in the backseat enjoying their post-movie Chick-Fil-A. I kept their minds alive in the dark. 

"Can you hear us back there girls?" I asked.

"No, Grandma, can you speak louder? I want to hear about your car accidents too."

Awww. 

And so Michelle spoke about all the supernatural car accidents she's been in. Her body bore the brunt of 3 big ones. 

A supernatural one, included, where bumper-to-bumper traffic disappeared the moment her car started to spin 360 across 3 lanes. And yes, traffic disappeared at exactly that moment, and when she stopped spinning, her car stopped into a perfect parallel park alongside the highway. She hit no cars... at all. All the way down an incline. When she started pedaling, the traffic returned as if it had always been there, as if cars could disappear and come back. At exactly the moment you need them to. 

Gosh.

She was meant to live, but not just that. 

Michelle Pinkston is unconditionally loved by such great powers.

An unconditional love. A truly unconditional love so great, they had power of intervention.

I kept calling her a liar, just to make fun, but it was all serious what this story means to her.

I think we each have our own stories you know? The ones that remind us how loved we are. How seen we are, by the powers that be or by the ones we don't see but love us far too great.

The stories that remind us that we are not forgotten. We are important. Our life means absolutely everything. And so does our joy. She is so selfless, with abundant love in her body. And I always feel so seen. So confirmed that she would never judge me, would always think positively of me, and is a rock to all around her.

She is a pillar. And she is a person. And she is a Pinkston.

I prayed to her, in that car ride, sometime in the middle of it, that she make it out to Alaska one day. I wished that she could see the aurora borealis someday. I wished there was a gift she can gift herself to celebrate such a beautiful life with. As hard as I wished that I can swim alongside the whales one day, I wished quietly, that she sees Alaska.