'Any Minute Mom Should Come Blasting Through The Door'

Family has an unparalleled influence on a person. Literary pieces express the theme of family in varying ways. One of these ways is trauma, negative events that damage one’s mind. Family trauma can include death, abuse, and neglect. Childhood and family trauma effect a person throughout their life. Three stories that explore family trauma are “Fool for Love” by Same Shepard, “Any Minute Mom Should Come Blasting Through the Door” by David Ordan, and “Going for a Beer” by Robert Coover. “Fool for Love “by Sam Shepard tells the story of two lovers Eddie and May. In this play, there is the Old Man, who only May and Eddie can see. He is a physical manifestation of their childhood traumas who follows them and they cannot seem to escape. The Old …show more content…
The main character tells that, “Mom was the talker. That’s what she used to say. She used to say ‘Boys what would you do without me?” (pg. 2). The mother was clearly the life of the household and the glue that kept it together. Without her, the main character and his father are lost. They sit at the table with it set for three, staring at each other, reminiscing in what happened. The main character focuses on the day she died, how he begged her to make him a sandwich, how that making that sandwich somehow killed her, how he gave her mouth to mouth, and how he didn’t save her. It’s clear that he was traumatized by her death, and believes that he is responsible for her death. He states that, “That’s when you’ve got to sit there and watch them put their hands all over her body and know they’ll never believe that you even tried to save her. That’s when the neighbors see the flashing red lights in your drive way and wonder what rotten son you are that you couldn’t save your mother. That’s when you’ve got your whole life to live, and its all going to be one excuse after another for why you didn’t save her” (pg. 2), the idea that this what his life would be like and this is how people would view him is outlandish but what he believes to be true. His father asks him at the end of the story, “Tell me, is that really how you want to …show more content…
This is the tale of a man who can’t say no and life seems to going by in a blur. Over and over again in the story, the main character tells of how he goes to the bar, drinks a few beers, and everything after that seems to be a blur. This man’s life is moving so quickly and he has so little recollection that it can be written in less than a page and defined as a story of a wasted life. He experiences marriage, infidelity, divorce, children, and death and is constantly having to ask himself what just happened. He never tells of his past but one can assume he had an all but great childhood. Family trauma in the story is not what had been done to him but what he has done to his family. The author reflects the character’s indifference to his family throughout the story and in the powerful quote, “One of the babies is crying, so, while he warms up a bottle of milk on the stove he goes into it’s room to give it a pacifier and discovers a note from his wife pinned to its pajamas, which says that she has gone off to the hospital to have another baby and she’d better not find him there when she gets back, because if she does she’ll kill him. He believes her, so he’s soon out on the streets again, wondering if he ever gave that bottle to the baby or if its boiling away on the stove” (pg. 1). He isn’t there for his wife, he isn’t there for his children and he isn’t even able to remember his own actions.