My mother flew past my window shortly after lunch. I was in a hurry to change my spaghetti splotched blouse. I didn’t lower the blinds. Everyone in the neighborhood was out at McDonald’s or stuffed behind desks eating out of paper bags. High school gym class trained me in flash changing. Leaving one article of clothing to pull on and adjust another was a transformation, not a process, a sparkle of skin, a fluttering of fabric, and that was it.

My mother flew past my window shortly after lunch while I was changing. Her arms were flapping, swimming through the air that swept her whiting hair up into a halo. I heard a whisper brush the windowpane but I didn’t move to look. My mother flew past my window shortly after lunch when my back was turned. I know my mother flew past my window because when I went downstairs to check on her she was making tea. Her cheeks were red and she was beaming and buzzing around in the cupboards looking for sugar and teacups. She smelled like the wind and had a twig stuck in her hair. I told her she had a twig stuck in her hair and plucked it out for her. She said she wished shoulder blade tattoos of Monarch butterflies were as simply removed.

I left her in the kitchen and went back upstairs to grab my purse in case the light bulb above my license plate had burnt out and a cop stopped me. I didn’t want to be nose to nose with a police officer without my license when my mother was in the car, taking notes of the scene to relate to her friends with the successful children.

My room smelled like spaghetti sauce. I worked the window open. My hand brushed the outside of the window and pieces of white yarn fell into my palm. Back downstairs, my mother was sitting at the table bathing her face in the steam rising from her tea. She was wearing the white sweater I had attempted to knit for her last birthday. She told me then that she was glad I wasn’t perfect. That meant her work wasn’t over and she’d have at least another fifteen years left, at least. I gave her a hug and before she could ask what the hell I was doing, and couldn’t we just go to the goddamned funeral and get it over with, I noticed the shoulder of her sweater was torn. I told her that the shoulder of her sweater was torn and that she should go change it, because if Dad’s ghost was hanging around the funeral watching people cry to make sure they were crying enough, he would be hurt that his wife couldn’t even be bothered to wear clothes that weren’t all torn up. She asked why I was so picky all of a sudden, he wouldn’t care at all, he was used to her, but she’d find another better knitted sweater to wear anyway, just to make me happy.

As she pushed herself up from her tea, I asked her why she had flown past my window after lunch. She told me not to be silly, that apparently my psychiatrist was doing more harm than good, old ladies can’t fly, and that if I’ve kept a tattoo from her all these years, I could be keeping anything and she just needed to make sure I was o.k.