Mommy

“Kiss your hand, mommy.”

“Welcome, dear. How rarely you drop by! I don’t know how long I have left to live.”

A woman over 87 years old opens the door and takes me in her arms lacking the strength of youth, with those wrinkles that reflect my troubles, and those of my brothers, and her own, over a lifetime just as tumultuous and tense as of any of us. Those wrinkles inflicted on any being, or on the bark of any tree, or on the planet, which are cicatrized by the resonance with nature and with the universe we live in. I am in tears and she does not know what to do anymore, she was so happy; if she had been younger, she might have danced or sang, but she was less and less able to do anything as days went by. In the past, she used to rush and set the table with all sorts of goodies prepared by her, but now, if I am in a hurry, I have to make my own. She can hardly walk with her swollen legs, perhaps from the weight of years, or just from a poor circulation, or who knows. For some time she does not even want to see a doctor anymore, as it seems afflicting and useless to her, and then she thinks she spends money for nothing, despite our insistence. At times, she waits to go into inexistence, which for her it is simply the great beyond, the Good Lord; sometimes it seems she really wishes for this inexistence that terrifies me and, I think, any other man as well.

Maybe I will also get to the perfection of her reason sometime, or maybe I do not have the necessary faith to accept all things the way the Universe Itself—or for some people the Good God—left them.

Strangely, she sometimes has panic attacks, but that state is not her reason or feeling, maybe just instinct, or something else from the human unconsciousness of the spirit, or maybe the future inexistence itself. Neither her voice nor her eyes are the same as in the old times. Forty years ago, she was so young that I cannot even believe, she used to be so active and did not think of inexistence, she did not know what to do first for her children and family, what kind of sweets to prepare or what delicacies to put on the table, and she cooked all sorts of sophisticated dishes. She was a great cook and had a good education as well, even though she has never practiced as a professor or schoolteacher, according to her qualification. The delegates of "daddy" from the capital city lodged wherever they could, but they ate mandatorily to our place the fish soup that mommy made, actually that fish borscht that only few knew, like the one from his home, like his mother’s, and mommy knew how to make it. The news were quickly spread throughout the company, businesses then were not as busy as now. Everybody licked their fingers, dipping polenta in the pan where the fish had been fried in cornmeal. We were favoured by fortune, she has never left us and probably even now she would not leave us, unless she had to, forever.

She has worked all her life with optimism, but our model over the years has been her iron will, her ambition to learn and to get there, where fate defeated her, despite the qualities she had. The parents were somewhat wealthy and did not necessarily care about learning and her intellectual future, and that has hurt her during her entire life, that is the reason why she has taught us these us intellectual values. She has always enjoyed a movie or a play, they were rare in a small town like ours, so used to read instead a book when she had some free time, but she did not really have much. Now she cannot even watch TV without struggle, and she still wants it, but she is no longer able to; her hearing does not help her much either, yet she does not give up discussing politics. Existence seems a punishment for her sometimes.

“Maybe you want to rest, Mom.”

“No, I'd prefer a walk in our park which, even though it has changed, it’s still the most beautiful in the county. I want to see the green park, as in our childhood.”

I am already melancholy, I know it is not the same, but it brings back so many deep feelings and, moreover, I can meet anytime with the reality of my memories, with my colleagues and friends, (some are already long gone), those who are left. Apparently, it is the same old park; it occupies the same space, apparently the same alleys, even the same trees, if I take a closer look.

Sometimes I think I am the only one transformed by the past time and space, I am the only one who no longer reflects the reality of the universe in which we once lived.

Maybe my memories or my spirit are no longer as vivid as then, maybe I also get closer to nonexistence and I lose the details of the present or past existence in which I evolved; or maybe not. In reality, nothing is the same anymore, if we consider that there is no identity in the universe, if we consider that space and time can never be identical. Present reality can never be similar to past reality, and I know this very well. What I am looking at now is the present of my past and of the universe in which I existed, and not only that, this is just the present image of my past in the mirror of my passing spirit that is left to me.

I kissed her cheeks wrinkled by old days and marked by each moment, each day or night, year or decade that have passed over us, I open the door and leave. I let her happy that she could still see and hear me, and she knows that I will return to eat, as in the long forgotten times, in an hour or two.