Interlude

Ever since my mother's flight was postponed two days ago due to inclement weather, I've kind of felt like I'd been spared the gallows. That changed this morning when she waved a final farewell to my son and I at the airport and became a faraway pinpoint of a person too difficult to distinguish amongst others any longer.

I have to say that I was pretty proud of myself for holding it all in together until the kid started yelling aolita! aolita! come back! Though I could tell that prior to her leaving he had understood that a plane would be taking abuelita away and that this meant he had to say goodbye, I think he finally realized that the separation was going last more than a school day's worth of time.

When she was finally gone, I walked with my boy to the car and I cried quietly while strapping him in to his seat. I cried some more while paying the parking attendant, and I cried when I called my father to tell him that I had seen her safely off on her way back to him. Tears rolled down my cheeks as my husband (who is working today) told me to be careful because he knew I would be crying as I drove back home.

You would think she'd died from all the crying I've been doing and yet, she couldn't be more healthier and whole. When in fact, she goes back home recharged after an invigorating month spent in the company of her grandchild and after having seen, with her two eyes, that both her daughters are happy in their marriages and safe in their respective loves.

I could not explain to you specifically what guides this crying of mine except, that even as I write this, I know that it has a whole lot to do with missing her and then more with the inability to share my son with her on a daily basis. For sure my tears are deeply borne of never wanting to forgo the feeling that I am eternally, her child. As always, her departure leaves me feeling shortchanged, sabotaged, conscious that somehow, in a perfect world, I should be able to bask undisturbed and for ever, in her motherly love.