Never Grow Old

Part 4-Mother

I don’t want her to be here, witnessing my most vulnerable side.  The emotions that used to rage within me so long ago, the tears and laughter I shed are supposed to be gone, held within me so no one could creep inside my heart again.

But how could I not be hurt, feel so much at one time?

Her breathing comes closer, until it pushes against my neck, the hairs wafting in the tiny draft.  The inward-outward movements can be heard even louder now that my tears fall silently. My stomach involuntarily racks from time to time and I begin to doubt she is still there, but for the fact that I can feel her neutral mood and hear her breathing.

Something begins to change in the air. Electricity starts a spark and suddenly I feel a white elephant take shape and realize it is coming from my mother. Where there was only indifference, uncaring coldness, now grows a foreign awareness.

It is so slight at first that I barely catch it, but being super attuned to Mother’s moods for so many years, I feel its voracity flourish until it is so strong, I can barely fathom it. Love, what I feel is perfect, unadulterated love and I am amazed.

Her breathing changes, hitching as she comes closer. Warmth spreads outward from her fingers and her sentiments into me as she clutches my hand, gently caressing it. My own breath is taken from me, my lungs along with the rest of me unable to comprehend this change and unable to move or to react.

My head seems to rotate of its own accord and I find myself gazing up into her light blue eyes, her beautiful ghost eyes. I never fully realized just how exquisite her eyes are, how much like mine they are, until I feel her love towards me and am able to return it in a rather vulnerable and shaky box.

I slowly reach out to her, hesitating, trying to ascertain her reaction, ready to pull back at any wavering in her demeanor. But she never changes, and she doesn’t move. My fingers caress her face, and a film of water grows in her eyes.

She closes them, and her mood changes into—pleasure, an uncorrupted feeling I have never felt from her before.

“Mother,” I call my voice breaking.

She opens her eyes, close to the edge of a tear escaping. She nods, maybe too emotional to speak from what I can feel from her.

“Mother” I whisper, “what are you doing here?”

She pulls her hand back but doesn’t get up from her sitting position on my bed. Her mood reeks now of uncertainty and I don’t want this moment to pass, to never come again.

“Mother, I love you.”

Looking for her reaction, I wait, moments passing.

“Oh Asha,” she suddenly says, breaking the silence in the room.

Her frame moves closer to me and she unwittingly pushes her longer legs out onto my bed, falling into a comfortable pose. Her hands snake around my waist and I am so shocked my breathing stops again.

“Asha, Asha, Asha, am I such a bad person that my own daughter wonders at my loving actions?” She exclaims, waving her hand in the air.

It is almost as though I am in a dream and this new person is actually a robot who has replaced my own mother, and I must wake up. So I pinch myself and cry out from the pain, fully realizing that I am in reality.

She scans my face, her tiny worry lines crinkling. I finally manage to find my voice.

“It’s, just, uh, I have never been one to wonder if you have loved me because we have been so caught up in-in,” Think!, I scream to my brain, “in so many activities over the years.”