Cicely is an eighteen-year-old woman working an evening shift at her fast-food job that she hates. But it is in what has happened to her that we see that the work she is doing now is just a step in what she has coming next. She is a mother to her little brother Timmy who lives with Autism. For over a year she ignored that Timmy was different. There were telling signs and situations that should have led her to get him tested or get him assistance but as time passed, she ignored and did nothing. Finally, the family doctor told her that he needed to be tested and after the diagnosis she decided what was best was for Cicely to either become his mother or go out at a then fifteen years old and live her best life. Cicely refused to leave her little brother not knowing what was going to happen to him, so she did the only thing she knew to do, she worked. Stepping into the role of his mother she read books, websites, did all of the research she could do to have a better understanding of how Timmy’s mind worked and how she could forever connect with him. It all worked and on her eighteenth birthday she served her mother with custody papers asking her to sign over her parental rights to Timmy. The only thing she wanted was an opportunity to tell her face to face what her decision to stop being a mother did to her children. In a beautiful moment of adulthood, Cicely confronts her mother on the bad decision that she made. But she also tells her that had that not happened she wouldn’t now be a mother of the most wonderful kid in the world, her little brother Timmy.
Just Perfect
(Cicely, an eighteen-year-old girl mops the floor. She is clearly exhausted. She looks at her watch, sighs and continues mopping. She gets an alert from her phone, looks at it and smiles. This smile turns into a laugh and after a few moments the laugh turns into tears.)
Keep mopping Cicely. Just keep going that's what you have to do, that's what you have committed to, that's what you have been telling yourself for the last year just keep going. (beat) But I'm so damn tired. (to audience) There are a lot of things that I wanted to be in life, I had it all planned out ever since my freshman year when our guidance counselor came into our English class and gave us this list, and I mean it was a massive list of all of these occupations that we could be. (joy) She told us we could be anything and I believed her, I mean that was the goal, right? There I am fourteen years old, braces, all of the typical freshman gear and I’m flipping pages and… BOOM… there it was. A picture of a woman who kinda looked like me and she’s sitting on a stool and next to her on the bed is a beautiful golden retriever. The caption said, “Speak for those who can’t, be a vet.” That was it. I loved animals even though my mother never allowed us to have one, I always felt like animals and babies are the two species of beings that cannot fight for themselves. (She looks around and loses her joy) Now I'm here in a fast-food restaurant at 11:30pm on a school night when I should be doing what my friends are doing. My friends are sleeping, not paying bills, living in a home, not worried about rent, they are giving and receiving love, not begging for it and I'm here, with a mop in hand and tonight I feel like I'm fighting for my next thought just to be clear. I'm eighteen-years-old I shouldn't be fighting for anything… The difference a year makes.