It’s hard to see someone you love hurting. It’s really, really hard when that someone is the person that so often has taken your hurt away. No matter what the pain, talking to her somehow made it better.
When you fell into the pool, because you’ve always been graceful like that, and scraped your entire leg, all you wanted was her. When you didn’t get picked for the team (probably the lack of grace again) you just wanted to see her. To tell her. When your friends gossiped about you, when you tripped in the hall, when you got your heart broken, she was the only one you wanted to see.
This person, as if there were any question, is my mother. And she’s hurting now. Because of life, because of love, because of death. And all I want to do is take it away. I want to reach inside her heart and mind and remove the memory for a while. I want to take the feelings and coat them with sugar so they might go down a little easier. I want to have answers.
You never really realize, until it stares you in the face, how your happiness can be wrapped up in those you love. How one person, in just their being and who they are can symbolize things in life that you’ve come to know. Things you’ve come to count on.
Now that I’m older, we have better conversations. Conversations that are deeper and more real. It is a blessing, but it is also a realization. I remember that feeling, I got it for the first time in college. It’s when you realize your parents are just people. They know a lot, but not everything. They have passions and dreams and feelings, just like you. It’s so odd, that feeling. Knowing that this person, when it comes down to it, is someone you love beyond even your own ability to understand but also, that they’re real.
It’s the real that I see right now. It’s not because I think I can save her. It’s not because I think she can’t handle it. It’s not some parent-child reversal. It’s just my reaction. She’s scraped her knee and me, well I can’t find the right band-aid.
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