“Day Eighty-Four” & Fun Mom

Credit: Electric Literature.

Story: “Day Eighty Four”

I put a palindrome above the sink in the bathroom: Madam I’m Adam, on a piece of white paper, taped to the wall. To entertain the children, who are home all the time now. Who are bored.

Have you thought it was Thursday when it was Tuesday? Or October when it’s November? Felt like you voted a month ago and you’re still not sure which way Arizona went, or Alaska? Have you made the same dinners for five months because the difference between Taco night and Salad night is one day, but it’s a full three days between Tacos and Enchiladas (which are just saucy, baked tacos)? Did you forget it was Sept-octo-vember because it’s seventy-two-degrees out and you’re wearing sandals to the grocery store once again which, actually, pair really nicely with your mask now that you notice it? Have you burst out into laughter yet at something because you’ve been waiting to burst for so long, to laugh or cry or scream from behind your steering wheel at the jacked-up truck with the flags that cut you off on the freeway trip you took to relieve stress?

Aimee Bender’s “Day Eighty-Four” totally gets it: it’s a mood, a vibe, a flash fiction piece that captures the persistent purgatorial energy of 2020 perfectly.

“What is it called, when it’s the same letters back and forth?” [my son asks.] My husband, sitting and looking at his phone in the living room, tells him it’s called a pandemic.

During 2020, in the extended period of time some of us have spent with family and friends that we live with, we’ve all had to carve out new rituals for release, new coping mechanisms that provide a sense of control and an illusion of distance that satisfies our need for space.

There’s a subtle, yet familiar, fear and anxiety baked into this short-short that has all of us thinking “I’m in this story and I don’t like it.” The mother, the narrator, runs through every quarantine-demic emotion within the tight confines of the story, from playful to frustrated to confused before skulking away to her quiet place and back again. Parents are often in need of that space, and more support, even during otherwise “normal” times, and “Day Eighty-Four” highlights the extreme to which the pandemic has increased the emotional toll for all caregivers and, indeed, for everyone. Tensions rise, then crest, and a recharge is needed—a reset and some peace before it all begins again and again. (“Well, what if there is no tomorrow?” Phil says in the movie Groundhog Day. “There wasn't one today.”) And yet the story’s momentum moves towards levity, towards absurdity, and the family’s shared joy in a laughing fit that highlights something important about family, memory, and emotion.

Time has always passed like this, in featureless ribbons of nothing. We’ve only ever remembered life as staccato moments of good and bad separated by whatever (a technical term). The bad times and the good are like a series of knots in our memory-ribbon marking a first kiss or that time we hit a parked car; when we went to our first funeral; or that first tattoo and the regret of not getting an outline for it. We remember the feelings that we anchor to objects and people and places in the external world. This brief story, too, is an anchoring to a moment, one of those knots in an entire era of whatever, when things are less defined and boundaries dissolve—we work at home, shelter in place, repeat the past, and I guess science is made up now or magic all of a sudden?—which helps remind us that, well, it’s okay not to have definition. The feelings, the dissolution, we’ve always navigated extremes but we’re more aware of them now. And in time, we’ll remember this stretch of purgatory as a blip, a folded up note in a pocket marking the time we made fresh bread and watched Tiger King, as the time we understood the undercurrents of our city better from a distance (somehow). Even Purgatory has a purpose, we’ll think. What they heck? So it’s okay to be anxious and frustrated and need space, and to make it, but remember to make it apologetically yours. Let the feelings come as they may. Tears. Laughter. Umpteen loaves of baked bread. You can figure out the definition for it tomorrow.

Cocktail: Fun Mom

I put a palindrome above the sink in the bathroom….and felt like fun mom for a short time and then later, experienced the patience drain out of me around 3pm, like it just left my body all at once, like a liquid exit, like my body is a shotgunned beer and someone just drank me and my patience down.

Get ready to be the Fun Mom! (Imagine: finger guns and pew-pew noises.)

Look, this cocktail isn’t fancy, but it’s fun. Chocolaty and fruity, sweet but not cloying—it’s basically the cocktail version of the Midwest casserole: you can throw nearly any spirit into the mix and come out the other side smiling. In fact, I designed this drink with stay-at-home working moms and dads—any parent or guardian who needs a little somethin’ to get ‘em through those purgatorial days—in mind. This cocktail has just three ingredients, two of which you can find at most basic grocery stores, and it works beautifully with any base spirit. Trust me, I made my wife try them all: Vodka, Bourbon, Scotch, Blanco Tequila, Gin, White and Spiced Rum, Brandy… got a big ol’ handle of something cheap leftover from a party two years ago? Then you’re sittin’ pretty.

And if you need a little cover for that Zoom interview, or because the kids are onto you, don’t worry! This drink goes well with coffee or dark cola, with soda water or a splash of tonic. Only you are getting in the way of adding pineapple juice or dry champagne (or both?) and, really, that’s an act of hate against your better self.

Recipe: Fun Mom

1oz Any Base, Unflavored Spirit*
1oz White Creme de Cacao (though Dark’s fine, it would only muddy the color)
1.5oz Sherry**

1. Pour over ice in a mug or glass, in a Thermos—whatever, momma.

2. Optional: add some coffee, hot or cold. Or: Dry champagne to make it a Fun Mom Royale.

3. Make sure to have a drinking rule for your Zoom call that involves business lingo. “Bubble that up”? Drink! “Synergy”? DRINK! But, seriously, it’s important to remember to drink.

Notes: *I tried some inexpensive flavored spirits (raspberry vodka, apple whisky) and it made the cocktail very sweet. If you like sweet, go for it. Caramel is a nice match here. Alternately, you can cut the Creme de Cacao in half (to 0.5oz) and that would help.
**Sherry is a diverse and storied fortified wine that, like anything nice, has been brought down to the most affordable level. Huzzah! If you want something inexpensive, Fairbanks makes a “Sherry” (that’s what it says, just “Sherry”) that’s about nine bucks or, if you want a thing you can brag about over your Zoom Happy Hour, Lustau makes an Amontillado Sherry for about twice that cost that’s really great. Do you have to use Sherry? No. Sweet vermouth is fine, and even a sweet red wine might work. Sherry just has a great array of spice and a unique nuttiness that balances the cocktail. But do you, Fun Mom. Do you.