My mom burned down the house for April Fools. We were on vacation. She and my grandmother, me and my friends.
At 5am, she threw the door open and yelled, panic her voice, “Girls! Pack your bags. We have to go home. There’s been a fire. We have to go. NOW.”
Fumbling, adrenalized, and still in a stupor, we got dressed, jumped into our shoes, shoved our stuff in bags, and then rode through the California desert, numb, mute, while my mother cried at the steering wheel, wondering what we were going to do. I was twelve.
About a half hour down the road, she broke the April Fools news.
She thought it was hilarious.
……….
It was almost as funny as when her father posed her for a photograph, six months old and naked, hanging on to a clothesline
for dear life…