I live alone. Sometimes I pass my 26-year-old brother Raf on the way to the blender; we share a love of green smoothies, but mostly I live alone. When my dad comes home, which is rare, he pesters me, but I usually go out then. I socialize when I want to with whom I want to, but when I want to be alone, I usually am. So, not only is this trip terrible because I am constantly attached to another person, but it’s my mother. To the nearest profession, currently my mother is a clown. Not one that works at birthday parties or circuses, or really at all, but a self-proclaimed clown taught in some expensive European workshop called a clown school.

After the divorce she legally changed her name from Helen Bess Nakdimen to Ruby Rain. When this name change happened, I wondered two things: one, does she have any legal right to me now that we share no part of our legal names, and two: no middle name? It makes sense, I guess, because middle names are connectors. They’re usually namesakes to a beloved ancestor or friend, or a mother’s maiden name. My mother somehow was never good at lasting connections. When she moved out west after the divorce she was cutting ties and starting afresh. Ruby Rain it was. Her email address, like her name, changed quite often until she came to one she thought defined her. It's now rubyclown@gmail.com.

She took me to the Berkeley Bowl, the local, cheaper, better version of Whole Foods. While we walked to the car, she started talking about cougars. “Cougars, huh, I’ve been hearing people talk about them a lot,” I checked out assuming she was going on about some slightly off the beaten track symbolic animals that showed up in her latest totally magical dream. I checked back in when she said, “How much younger does the guy have to be for the woman to be considered a cougar?”

I flashed back to a conversation I had with my brother in which we had conjectured that this might be the case as we grimaced and changed subjects promptly. She went on to talk about how the “the guys she gets with are usually younger.” Trapped in the front seat of a moving car, I searched vainly for something to distract my mind and completely block out the fact that my mother was speaking like I usually do. Having had a five-hour plane delay at Newark airport, I had already thought out my most pressing and interesting thoughts. I turned to electronics and promptly texted those of my friends whom I deemed capable of handling the news that my mother had just told me she were a cougar. My responses were such: “Uh oh. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass. This too shall pass,” and “Ew why would you ever want to know that about her.”

I dreamed that I had just finished my commitments for the weekend, and that I realized I had until Tuesday all to myself, in NYC. I could go home and meet with friends if I wanted too, or I could stay in New York and see whomever I wanted, or do whatever I wanted. I had no obligations or commitments. I was free to be on my own.

I woke up to the California Sunshine, and it was the worst sunshine I have ever felt. I looked up into it through the appendages of the stuffed praying mantis propped up on the table above my bed. I tried to close my eyes again, but finally succumbed to the idea that twelve hours of sleep was really all that I could get away with.

I looked around at my mother’s whitewashed apartment with wall-to-wall carpeting. It was just like all the others. Who cares what western run-away-from-reality town I was waking up in this time? I liked the couch better than the blow up air mattresses in Boulder. Although my mom tried to stick me with the cheap sheets from her subleter before I insisted upon the organic cotton ones I knew she had for herself (I have had eczema since I was little, so sheets are a serious issue for me). She also gave me much scratchier towels than she uses for herself, but I figured I would choose my battles and be happy with the soft sheets.

My eyes fell on her shrine in the corner comprised of little tables and boxes covered in sequined fabric with candles, cards, and a flamingly red haired Barbie doll she bought in Israel because it said “funny” on the box; it strikingly reminds me of her mother’s house in Seattle. Sure, at least she is using boxes and wire tables rather than old TVs, and yes she is not living in low-income housing with lawn chairs covered in afghans for furniture, but still the odd items covered in fabric remind me of her mother and therefore of her steps towards the edge.

I looked out my window as we drove along winding highways through what would be beautiful countryside, but amidst the grandiose ridges and furtive green valleys was the stench of over-development. Visibly, where lush green trees should have overcome the scene, white block houses built on yellow block houses where blue block houses had once been scattered until all the cheaply-made expensive houses cluttered the view. The dips and rises of the Northern California hillside excited and promptly disappointed my sense of wonder.

Hour by hour she talks at me. She is uncomfortable in silence. I want to stop calling her mom or mother because those sound too familiar and I think they give her the impression that we still have a mother daughter relationship. It takes all my strength to let her annoying words glide past me. I get short tempered with her less and less often. I stopped fighting with her about “basic communication skills;” I stopped fighting with her about anything. She gets upset sometimes, and attempts to start one, but I’m not emotionally involved. I say my piece and keep walking until she works her frustration out. We take the train home, in the seat that faces backwards, without conversation.