Wawa, Ontario isn’t even in the middle of nowhere – it’s on the edge – and I’ve still got twenty more miles like a silent movie.
My mother said to come before dark and I got maybe fifteen minutes left, I swing through one familiar curve after another until there’s the driveway, the curtains are open, my mother’s leaning shape hurries away, she doesn’t want me to know she’s watching for me, still stinging from the teenager I was.
I have just a small bag, almost nothing. I run to the door where my mother says I’m so glad you made it and I know that she is still afraid of me, she braces for my reaction in case she has overstepped, overloved, overtried.
I came in part because I understand some of this now.
My father does not come upstairs and as usual I have to go find him in his burrow.
He calls me lass and offers a whiskery kiss and a Quality Street both of which I accept before I escape to the kitchen, over-chewing the stale toffee like I am yelling, and there she stands, my mother.
I catch her before she knows I’m there.
The real her.
She stares out the black kitchen window above the soapy sink into nothing – and this is what I meant about understanding – because I know that the dark forest is where she’s packed her disappointments, the monumental thisses and lost thats of her life.
She turns her head and looks at me gives me a little nod and I return everything about that look which she sees and flickers an acknowledgment, but still there is a care she takes when she asks what’s new? like she pours it, and this time I tell her.
We sit at the table and I tell her about work, friends, my struggles with eating healthy I say through the warm residue of toffee, my money problems and then right away I show her on my phone the new boots I bought online, lol, and I show her Andy with whom I have had two dates, he looks nice she says, and I touch gently – and this one is only ever between mothers and daughters – on my hovering-but-improving self-esteem and she whispers back practically choking on love good for you.
I’m choking, too.
I don’t have to explain or apologize, I see something leave her face, she knows it’s different now.
