She has a soft nature about her, something like the gentle footsteps of an elderly cat; slow but deliberate, with many more years of life behind her than the lines on her face would suggest. She’s been through far too much for anyone to deny her respect. I, of course, am no exception.
She shows up in magazines, on radio talk shows, even on stage giving speeches. She chooses her words meticulously, but she never plans them. Some days I wish she would speak to me the way she speaks to an auditorium full of stuffy, stout-nosed businessmen.
She sits at the kitchen table every night, slumped over as if she has run to Alaska and back in a matter of hours. It’s evident to me that she feels like she’s failed at something every day. I have tried to take her fragile heart in my hands and show her she’s doing fine, but I know it’s not working.
She is not really the upright, happy and successful businesswoman that the world can see. No, I know her as the one who used to feed me jars of mashed-up carrots, who would watch me tenderly as I slept in my cradle, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
She was perpetually optimistic, the victim to a life of hardship, yet she still found those moments of simple perfection in her world; she took the time to carefully frame and preserve them, and they sit on the walls of her mind.
She was brought up to know hard work. She tries and tries to recreate those lessons that she learned and plant them in my mind, but she simply cannot. It is impossible to do so when my life is so immensely different from hers. Sometimes I think she knows this, but it’s hard to tell through that rock-hard frown she’s always wearing.
She’s a wonderful woman, but she is not perfect. She can travel all over the country and run a company and raise three children at home, but when it’s hard, I am the focus of her hypocritical frustration. Hypocritical because she simply can’t deal with every little thing she puts on her plate, and she’s too busy to even realize it.
She cares too much about making sure to take over a friends Sunday school class, catering to the neighbours’ bridal shower, and getting my brother and sister to all of their soccer games. She doesn’t realize that every passing comment – “Your hair makes you look like a drug addict”, “Don’t eat that, you don’t need any more calories today”, “You’re never going to succeed in life if you can’t even water my flowers for me while I’m gone”, “I’m only saying so because I love you” – every single one leaves a heart-shaped bruise on my mind.
She used to love me, I’m sure. And I’m also sure she thinks she still does. But it’s fairly obvious that her patience with my hair, my jeans, my petty faults, and pretty much my everything has run dry. I don’t think she can keep up the pretence any longer, and I’m not about to stick around and watch her head blow off. I don’t know if I would live through that.
She’s a wonderful woman, but she actually wonders why I can’t wait to walk out of her life. And me? I wonder how long it will take her to figure that one out.
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