What's Your Line?

This story uses prompt 2 and also a little bit prompt 3

When you suppose that tomorrow will never come, you are pretty much right. Tomorrow never really comes, just scoots over a little more. I never really figured this out until my mother lost all sense of time. She no longer understood the concept of minutes and hours and days. Everything else was fine, I guess. But she would look at a clock and just laugh. Everyone thought that she was off her rocker, but I felt sort of bad ridiculing her to my friends. She seemed lighter, never rushing to a deadline. Got her in heaps of trouble at work, but I couldn't help envying her a little.

I realized what had happened probably a few days after it occurred. I asked her how many more minutes before art camp. She had giggled a little. "Oh, my lovely Malia. Time is so very relative." I had scowled slightly, "Yes, but how many more minutes?" She had gotten a funny little expression on her face, like she knew more than me. I guess I knew she wouldn't say much more (that made sense to me anyway) so I walked away. Oh, and I missed the art camp.

Afterwards, my father took on all the responsibilities involving time, which there are more of than you would think. He was exhausted from the sudden workload. He was now often saying, "All of these chores are absolutely maddening. No wonder your momma went off the wall." He said it in a joking tone, though.

Mom, through all of this, seems unaware of all this talk over her time issue. Nobody is quite sure what is wrong with her, and we have visited therapists and doctors alike. Mom always asks them, "Why am I in here, in the looney bin?" And when they find that they don't know what's wrong with her, she grins like she knew she wasn't nuts.

She's going to a treatment clinic soon. It's a nice place, but I'm going to miss her, nuts or not. I hope that they can cure her while letting her keep the carefree demeanor she's grown. I hope it doesn't get worse. I hope a lot of things for a person who knows that tomorrow's never coming.

Kat 💖