pg. 210

You have just completed you 310-page autobiography. You flip through your work and randomly land on page 210. What does it say? (I had to write about this prompt for school, and I liked what I produced enough to post it on my blog.)

Finally, after ten years of painstaking measurements, tests, and false alarms, my research was nearing completion. A cure was at hand.

At home, another milestone was reached. Jorma had notified me the night before that he would be having some friends over to study. This struck me as odd because the teenager resembled his mother in his enjoyment of solitary learning sessions. Of course, he had participated in study groups before, even if only to help his peers with difficult material. I guess it was the fact that he had invited whomever they were to the house—not that I had any problem with that. He had never had any house company. It was very…curious.

Anyway, I whipped up a batch of my famous fudge stones because a little ganja takes an hour of studying a long way. They were cooling off on the patio table when I heard Jorma’s car pull into the driveway. Much to my surprise, I looked out the window and saw Jorma walking up the doorsteps not with a group of guys, but with a single girl. She looked Asian American and wore her hair in a ponytail. Judging by her attire—running shorts and a 5k t-shirt with slippers—and fairly toned physique, I figured that she was an athlete. Thinking back, I recalled seeing her walking around campus with a group of like girls. She seemed to be the leader of the group, walking in front of the pack and always conversing with one of the others. I was getting carried away with all these inferences when Jorma yelled out that he was home. Noticing the way he smiled so freely and had a sort of skip in his step, I made one last inference: Jorma had finally found a first love.* So that was why he had been acting to strangely lately! I grew very excited, rushed to the living room, ran back to get the fudge stones, and rushed back down again.

I walked in—or rather stumbled in—on them juggling Jorma Jr. (Jorma Jr. was a small soccer ball I gave to Jorma on his birthday; needless to say, I had taught my son a thing or two about naming inanimate objects.) The girl was surely a soccer player (I have a sixth sense about those things). Good job, son, I thought happily. Jorma was an overall cheerful boy, but I had never seen him glow so much. “Who’s this lovely lady?” I asked. I was trying my best not to embarrass him, but I was not and still am not very skilled at that.

“This is Mika. She’s in my class.” He smiled and furrowed his brow as if to tell me, in our mother-son language, “Mom, don’t embarrass me.”

I subtly raised one eyebrow in response to reassure him of my good intentions and said, “That’s a cool name. What brings you to our humble abode?”

She seemed rather nervous. I could tell because she began to answer me but had to clear her throat and start again; I used to do that all the time when I was a teenager. She was probably worrying about me worrying about her age.** “Jorma wanted to show me his library, and we’re supposed to work on our project. Plus, he tells me that your fudge stones are the best on the island. I’d like to see if he speaks the truth.”

I put on an abashed smile. “Well, I have been refining these brownies since I was in high school, so, if they aren’t that good, I’ve wasted a lot of time. But why don’t you be the judge of that.” I set the tray on the table and each of us took one. Good thinking, Jannel! Fudge stones are the perfect way to weed out the buggers. I kept a close watch on

*This was very important to me as a parent because first loves are either the only loves or the loves that break your heart and set the pace for future loves.

**If you’re not keeping tabs, Jorma was seventeen at the time. As I explained before, he skipped a few grades as a kid, so anyone in his class was most likely three or four years older than him. Personally, I like to follow the Half-Plus-Seven Rule as closely as possible, but I understood that Jorma was very mature for his age.