I waited for my punishment to come, at first for hours and then for days, but instead an eerie calm settled in the house. This was really weird, why hadn't super-Nazi yelled at me yet and banned me from everything? Had I upset her? We were finishing dinner a few days later. Pasta, nothing special. As Mom got up to clear the table, she lent in and spoke to me. "Stick around Trent. I've got a surprise for you.". Um.... okay.
I decided to play along. No consequences had come from the argument the other day, so I didn't want to rock the boat just yet. Once the table was clear and the rest of the family were elsewhere, Mom invited me into the kitchen.
Look Trent. I had a think about it and wanted to apologize. It was just a couple of chocolate bars and I went way off the deep end. Anyway, that's not the real issue. The bigger issue is that we don't communicate or spend time together. And yelling at you over nothing just makes that worse."
"Uh... okay. Well, thank you." I wasn't convinced, but an apology wasn't a bad thing.
"Anyway, I thought it could be a good bonding exercise...' Oh fuck, here we go.
"...if we had a regular mother-son bonding night."
"No Mom, that's totally not ne..."
"I'm not finished!" she was stern but measured, "So I thought, if you wanted to eat junk food, maybe we could do some baking together?"
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Baking? Mom hated that stuff. In my whole life I'd never seen her eat anything that wasn't mega-healthy. I was insanely skeptical about the whole ordeal, but I guess this was a weird attempt at "nice" mom, so I should probably go with it to avoid a fight.
"Okay mom, that sounds like... fun."
Now, this may not seem weird to you, but you don't know my mother. Besides being a mega-bitch, she was also a no-nonsense, serious business woman and fitness nut. Fun and food don't enter this equation at all... ever. We went to the beach every now and then and I can confidently say that Mom has one of the least appealing bodies I've ever seen. I know she's my Mom and all, but even so she has the least interesting figure I've ever seen. Even in a bikini all you can see is thigh gap, no hips, no ass, no cleavage, no nothing. Not an ounce of pudge on her sticklike figure. And that was how she liked it, cold, simple and controlled. She kept to a grueling weekly exercise schedule, and probably hadn't touched a chip, ice cream or chocolate in decades.
So, offering to bake cookies and have "bonding" time was weird to say the least.
The whole ordeal was awkward and tense. We didn't really know what to say to each other, so we just blankly told each other instructions and worked at making cupcakes all but blindly. Once the tray was done, I offered Mom the first bite.
"Trent, I haven't eaten one of these in years. I can do without the sugar in my system."
Then why the hell did you bake these with me? "Well I'm not eating a whole tray of them mom. Plus, didn't you say it was a bonding thing?"
"Well yeah but..." I could see mom was trying to stop the inner Nazi creeping back, "Okay. Okay, I'll have a couple. You’re right, this is bonding time."