Amy Lu's View

I recently pulled one of my mother’s favorite tricks: The Exploding Can of Soda in the Freezer. 

Yes, I put a can of Coke Zero in the freezer to quickly cool it, forgot about it, and hours later found its frozen contents all over the freezer. (Okay, the frozen Coke Zero wasn’t really ALL OVER the freezer and was relatively easy to clean up, but, as I often do, I’m prioritizing dramatic effect over accuracy). 

What really made it a Colleen Move, though, is that I immediately started blaming Chad for this incident. No, my mom would NEVER have blamed Chad, who was clearly her favorite human, for any mishap, but she would have blamed my dad. In my mom’s world, my dad was responsible for EVERY mishap, annoyance, or tragedy she experienced, and many she just heard about. (To be fair, many things were my dad’s fault, but even he could only cause so much mayhem). 

So when I encountered the exploded Coke Zero and automatically started blaming my spouse for something that was clearly my fault, I was in full Colleen Mode. 

How was the frozen Coke Zero Chad’s fault, you may ask? Well, if he hadn’t drank the last properly refrigerated can of Coke Zero (which I don’t know if he actually did), I wouldn’t have been forced to put one in the freezer in the first place. And then he probably did something to distract me so I didn’t take it out of the freezer before it exploded (not sure what that was but given time I could think of something). 

In that moment of annoyance and ridiculousness, I felt really close to my mother. I’d like to think I feel my mother’s presence when I’m generous or loyal or helpful, and I do, because my mother was all those things. But I really thought about my mother, felt like I was my mother, when I blew up a pop can. 

Is that really my mom’s legacy? This little quirky habit she had? Maybe–or at least part of it. Will Chad really remember me for being unable to open bags of chips and boxes of crackers without destroying them? And leaving him annoying notes to inform him that the dishes in the dishwasher are clean (with the subtext that if “you put dirty dishes in with them I will murder you”).[Editor Chad’s Note: It’s not subtext; it’s definitely text] Probably. In some ways, I hope so. Being remembered for the little details about our peculiar ways, even if they annoy our loved ones, means that we are really known. 

As I was cleaning up the Coke Zero mess, I wanted to message my sister about it. She would have totally gotten how I was channeling our mom. She would have been amused (or at least pretended to be). 

In the almost twenty three years since my mom died, I miss her all the time, in big and little ways. I don’t like it–I hate that she’s dead and that she’s been gone so long–but the pangs of loss usually don’t surprise me anymore. Feeling the loss is just part of who I am now. 

But I’m not used to missing my sister yet. She died only about 4 months ago, so I’m still surprised and confused sometimes when I think “Oh I’ll send Jenn a message about this” and then realize I can’t. 

So there I was in our kitchen, missing my mom, and my sister, and my dad, and thinking about how my mom died so long ago that Coke Zero hadn’t even been invented yet. I felt a little like that can of Coke Zero myself–my emotions, like the soda, all weird and messy and no longer able to be contained. 

My frozen Coke Zero can metaphor feels silly and overdramatic, and yet true. So I might as well carry it even further: Just like exploding Coke Zero, my emotions, my grief, may at times be uncontrollable and inconvenient, but I shouldn’t try too hard to avoid them– at least they’re calorie free.