My memory places me at about 7 years old the first time that my older sister hurriedly got my attention on a funny little phenomenon that we had a lot of fun with growing up: The clock on the microwave hitting 11:11.
Sis told me, in that way that older sisters do, that if you notice the clock at 11:11, you’re supposed to make a wish before it switches to 11:12, and if you keep your wish a secret, it’ll come true.
Not to say that all youngest-children are gullible, but at the time, I met just about anything that my older siblings told me with the same level of skepticism as your favorite Facebook elder meets, well, everything they see on there. So you can imagine my excitement to learn that there was a loophole to the whole one-wish-per-year-when-blowing-out-your-birthday-candles rule.
I thought for a moment about what my wish would be, but knew that I didn’t have very long to lock it in (she’d already taken a bunch of my minute explaining how all this “worked”). Pressed for time, I landed on what would be my 11:11 wish throughout my childhood: I wished for my mom’s MS to go away.
But there was a problem with my wish. You see, the very same person who explained the rules of the 11:11 game to me almost immediately roped me into violating them by asking what my wish was, and of course I spilled. Now, obviously, in the small space of time between when I made that wish and when I blabbed it to my sister, my mom’s MS must have been packing its bags, preparing to “go away”, perhaps to make a home within somebody else’s mom. But, just as it was doing a final sweep of the place before heading out, it got the call: “The kid told his secret wish; you can stay.” Sisters, man.
After a few years of this pattern, making the same 11:11 wish only for it to not come true, I eventually stopped wishing, but I suppose I never stopped wanting. It is hard for me to give much thought to those wants for which I feel I have no ability to bring about, because in that way, a wish feels like an admission of defeat.
When I think about the nature of mom’s MS “going away” though, I can’t help but wonder how present it really is in the moments where we’re laughing. My mom has a great laugh, and when you really get her going, she’s the type to start crying and wheezing and threatening to pee her pants if you don’t stop. She’s had MS for nearly my whole life, but when I look at her in those moments, I don’t see it. It goes away, just for a few seconds.
I want to make my mom’s MS go away, even for just a few seconds at a time.