I.
She slapped the fish filets into my hands.
“Wash these.”

I had never held such a large quantity of raw fish before, and to be honest I liked the feeling. The musculature, the weight, and even the texture were all appealing to me. This is what the laws of nature have decreed! Man shall eat fish, as man is eaten by wild animals, abnormal weather patterns, and other men. But, the women shall cook fish, to be eaten by the men, who are eaten by the wild and each other, and who work hard all day to come home to a freshly prepared and always hot meal. Or some may think.



II.
I held the massive filet in the sink with my right arm, shifting around to manage the weight, and I washed with meticulous moves one after the other. I dried them briefly and handed them over.

As a standard, I am under the impression that I rarely receive useful information from my mother, and it is through her subconscious actions or unintentional behavior that I receive the important messages. At this moment, I was learning how to prepare three fish filets that had been untouched since they had been purchased at the supermarket. This was something I didn’t know, and something I felt would prove useful to me at some time in the future, so I paid attention. Musing over the fact that my mom had won the Betty Crocker baking contest for something or other when she was in high school, I considered my literary honors and felt superior. Look at her cook the fish! I laughed inside my skull, and heard echoes.



III.
Most of my time is not spent in the kitchen, because it is our housekeeper who generally helps my mom prepare the meals. My mom doesn’t clean, or dust, or wash dishes or clothes. She cooks, picks me up, buys me what I need, and combats Multiple Sclerosis. When she’s tired, she naps.

I smothered the filet in the raw egg I had finished scrambling. Then I breaded the piece all over, and dropped it in the pan. I repeated this for each. After they had cooked for a little while I spilled lemon juice on them, and the pot crackled. I would have been scared of this foreign chemical reaction had my mom not responded, “Good,” with authority.

IV.
The history of my mother includes many accomplishments, the sort of things you would feel proud to tell your kids, the sort of things that would make it okay for you to die with the knowledge that you gave back to humanity. It’s the “you did it, and boy, did you do a great thing” kind of stuff.

My mom really wants to not have to sit in a chair on the MS Advisory Board, or fundraise for MS research, or take a shot every day. She’d much prefer some up-and-coming scientist to get his name on a safe and effective cure for MS, and she’d much prefer to let him rest easy at night knowing that if his life ended that second, he’d be in the books.

Tysabri was a “miracle drug” that my mom took once. Afterwards, she told me she hadn’t felt that good in years. In February, Tysabri was pulled from the market because patients were discovered with a deadly brain infection. The scientific community wasn’t the first to find out about this terrifying relationship, the financial news had the story first. When the healthy people in charge of the Drug makers Biogen Idec Inc. and Elan Corp got word of the result of long-term use of their product, they abandoned ship, sold their stock, and were accused of insider trading. That’s how it came to the foreground. It wasn’t about general well being, or penetrating analysis, or material investigation. It came down to dollars and cents.



V.
Mom demonstrated how to flip the filets over in the pan by showing me one example. It split down the middle when she turned it over, and the crackling formed a crescendo. “You broke it,” I said as I flipped the last two perfectly.

“It’s okay,” she said, “I’ll eat that one.”

¶ 2/15/2006 06:43:00 PM 0 comments