She packs her new college clothes, her new college boots, her new cool biker jacket.
She is happy, psyched, afraid.
A new life, a new chapter away from home, away from me, her
mother, who has been her home for the last seventeen years.
She’s ready to go, to experience the world on her own without
me, but I’m her first language, her native language, an old flock of words, secretly
tucked under her tongue.
She crosses things off of her list: a shiny new suit case,
bedding, books, her art supplies, new underwear, she takes her tennis racket
too. Her dorm room overlooks the tennis courts, at her leafy college campus
I get her a “Maneki Neko”, The Japanese waving cat. “To bring
you luck” I say, she’s always wanted one.
We’re both anxious and stressed about the move, I take time
off work, she leaves her summer job for good. She gives her cat Ty lots of cuddles;
we pack both our cars and we’re on our way to Vermont.
We drive through Ohio, we pass Mentor, pass Ishtabula, we’re
surrounded by fields, green, luscious farms with big red barns straight out of
a children’s picture book.
I wonder who I am when I’m not her mother every single minute
of every day? I wonder who I am when she’s not with me. I wonder what I will
miss most, what I will miss first. The answer is immediate; I want to exclaim “look
cows!”, “look horses!”, “Look deer!” As I usually do when we’re on a road trip
together, but she’s in her car and I’m in mine. And I feel an ache as I see
Foals, Calves, and Fawns following their mothers, grazing when their mothers
grazed. Alert when their mothers’ ears perked up in alertness. Staring in deep
reflection, into the far distance, when their mothers stared. The hot August
sun falls on the rump of a beautiful brown horse, and its shiny coat shimmers
in rich honeys and golds.
Dark shadowy woods on both sides of the road now, and I think
to myself this is motherhood a dark shadowy wood, unknowable in its depth,
evergreen.
We exhaust Ohio, and our phones ping! “Welcome to
Pennsylvania “Pursue Your Happiness” the welcome sign reads. Lake Erie on our
left, yawns and opens it’s wide blue gray eyes, its dancing waters ripple and
wink.
We’re getting close to New York, we pass Buffalo, Niagara
Falls, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany.
After many corn fields, towns, and quaint cobblestone
villages, we finally reach Vermont with its green mountains and its clear lakes.
The campus is a swarm of energy, so much smiling, so many “nice to meet yous!”,
and “Welcome, we’re so glad you’re here!”. Jori and I carry her heavy suit case
up to her room on the fifth floor, Clunck! Clunck! Clunk! the new shiny
suitcase goes up the steps.
She’s happy she gets to choose her bed before her roommate
arrives next week. I smooth the new crips sheet across the small single
mattress, while she hangs her new clothes in her wardrobe “I’ve never slept on such
a small bed before mom, you’ve always spoiled me!” she says. She did sleep on a
single bed when she was small, but that was a long time ago. And it’s true,
I’ve always given her the best of everything, comfort, she has always known
comfort, and this makes me proud.
She places the Maneki Neko on her desk, in front of the high bay
window, solar-powered, the overweight, smiling white cat begins to wave, an
over-flowing pot of gold in its lap. A mesmerizing sunset trickles through the
lime colored leaves, bathing us in a puddle of soft, tender light.
By the next day, she’s annoyed by everything I say, “let’s
ask where the post office is, incase I need to send you something”. “Momm! I’ll
ask tomorrow”, she chides me. “Ok,” I say, and be quiet.
“Oh, let’s find the student parking and take your car” I
suggest. “Momm, I’ll take my car tomorrow.” “Ok, I say.” And be quiet.
The edges of my heart crack and crumble. “You wanted to raise
a strong, independent, self-sufficient young woman, “Congratulations! You’ve
succeeded.” The universe scorns me with an ugly smirk.
It’s time for me to go, she doesn’t need me anymore, and I
should be proud of that. She doesn’t need her mother to find the post office,
she doesn’t need her mother to find the students parking, or ask where to issue
a car park permit, she can do it on her own.
I thought she’d be relieved to see me go, but when we hug
goodbye, she cries, “You’re going to be amazing,” I tell her, “you’re going to
be great, I’m so proud of you, I love you. And remember you can always, always
come home, no matter what the situation is.” I hold her tight, then I let go. I
wipe my tears as a walk away, my mother instinct kicks in: “what the hell are
you doing, you can’t just leave your child and go, she’s just a baby, she
doesn’t know anything, she can’t survive on her own.” But I put one heavy foot
in front of the other and keep walking. Walking away from the body I protected and fretted over all
those years, the mind I fed and nurtured, the smile I coveted and captured in
all it’s toothless, shy, ecstatic, cheeky, cautious, and confident stages, filling
pages and pages of so many photo albums. The eyes I had to learn to decipher
when in her early teenage years she communicated only with grunts and
exacerbated sighs. The hair I washed, shampooed, combed, and braded. Big fat
tears roll down my red-hot face, and I’m grateful for the darkness that begins to
descend around me, as a gaggle of college girls walk towards me, long swishy pony
tails, pastel athletic wear, giggles and roller blades, the epitome of youth,
joy, and health.
I start my nine-hour drive back to Ohio, I think of how throughout
her life, I’ve steeped her into my love of art and literature, discussing our
favorite books and authors together, talking about paintings we’ve seen at the
museum for days, lingering on the magic of going to see a live orchestra. I
made her love what I love, see the world through my eyes, and now she will see
the world through a fresh pair of eyes. Decide for herself what the world is, I
am no longer her mother tongue, she will have new names for things, and those
new names will be different than the names I taught her.
I get home to a silent apartment. Ty is happy I’m back, he
looks behind me “Where’s Jori?” his big green eyes silently ask. I tell him
Jori will be back for Thanksgiving. I clean up the mess he made, I shower, I
make myself a sandwich. Silence, silence, silence.
As I get ready for bed I send her a text” does she need
anything? Is she okay?
Yes, she’s ok. No, she doesn’t need anything. Her text tells
me.
Her favorite mug with a picture of a black cat, lays upside down on the kitchen counter untouched. The first Saturday passes without me making her favorite Saturday breakfast, pancakes. The first Sunday passes without me making her favorite Sunday breakfast, French-toast. I come back from work swelling with an appalling story I want to tell her, but she’s not there. No shock and indignation, mirroring my shock and indignation. No hilarity in her laughter, mirroring the hilarity in my laughter. So many little stories, news, and silly gossip die in me unsaid, unshared. I’ve lost my best friend.
I didn’t know how much it had meant to me hearing “Mommy”
“Mommy” everyday. And her name for me had changed over the years. She was born
in the UK, and with her thick British accent I was first: “Mummy”, then I was “mum”,
then I was “mother”, then when we went back to Kuwait I was “Yma!”, and then we
came to America and I became a perpetually annoyed “Mommm!”
“Mummy Huggies,” she’d ask me for cuddles when she was a
toddler, and we would cuddle and snuggle and I’d cover her with kisses.
She calls once a week breathless with all the marvels of
beautiful Vermont, her new friends, the campus, her professors, the library,
the arts center, a great big, noisy world bursting with color. “Mom, we went to
Burlington and it looks just like a British city. Oh! And I swam in Lake
Champlain. Oh! and I’m going to learn to ski once the snow covers the mountains,”
She tells me. “That’s great darling, that sounds exciting!” I tell her.
Unincumbered, this is how I want her to live, untethered,
this is the life I want for her, why I’ve taken so many risks to migrate to
this country, so she can be free: free to move free, free to travel, from
religion, free from the tyranny of Muslim men, free from the hell of Islam,
free to live her life, however she pleases.
There were times when my life was so intwined with hers, she was
the very center of my everything, my life revolved so completely around her, that
the idea that I had existed once before her, that I had had a life before her,
that I was someone before her… stuns me. And now a similar astonishment,
from now on, she will have a life after me, a whole life that doesn’t include
me at all, I will exist only on the periphery of her life, only knowing what
she allows me to know, only glimpsing what she allows me to see, as she transforms
into the woman she was always meant to become.
I think about the miracle of her, of all the women who came
before her, just so she can come along, just so she can happen, a dormant speck
of an egg, she existed in my womb, not only since my birth, but since I was a
fetus in my mother’s womb, waiting, for her time, waiting for her turn. I
stagger at the Miracle of her.
Fall comes, and I go into the woods, this is motherhood I
think, the deep shadowy woods, not evergreen I now realize, but everchanging,
its very beauty, its very power is in knowing when to let go, and when to begin
again, churning its myriad shades of green and gold.
