A letter to my Mother
By isabellealina
- 396 reads
The grass in our garden is almost one foot high. When I lie in it and look upwards I feel like a small creature in a vast forest; and I feel safe – shrouded in those blades of a thousand green shades as if nothing in the world could ever find me, here. But I also feel a little terrified. Because that is exactly what I am, and what we all are - isn’t it? Small creatures amongst vast universes of which all we know are the shades that poke the peripheries. What makes anybody a somebody? The grass needs mowing but I like the height, and I like to look out from the bedroom window and to see our lawn so free and dancing amongst its neighbours’ straight and ‘proper’ buzz-cuts.
I don’t want to be found, I think to myself. I have spent too many years trying to be ‘found’, and ‘liked’, and ‘proper’ and ‘successful’ and ‘popular’ and ‘respected’ and in fact none of that has brought me joy, Mama, yet it’s what I do and what we all do, like there is a new genome for it.
I can lie in the grass for some hours and then, when I rise, my locus remains stamped on the turf. It’s like having two shadows – one from the Summer sun: that shadow that shows me how days pass and that time is not infinite, and then my grass shadow to remind me that time can stop in a moment, if only I lay and let the world flow around my edges for a while like a rock in a stream. It’s in those moments that I think of you the most and I think of how much you have shaped me into the person I am today. I wish we lived closer, but I think we make do, and for your attention and relentless love, patience, optimism I am ever astounded.
I think a lot about your heart, with all its scars and metal parts and tainted history and each time I do my chest tightens like a Chinese finger trip about my own. Your story is one a million and I want the world to know how proud I am of what you’ve been through, but I’m still finding the words to tell the tale, even ten years later. My heart sits on my sleeve and that’s something that you taught me to do - scars and all, and sometimes it is burned by the elements to which it is exposed but sometimes it brings magic. I am a somebody to you, and to Dad, and that’s the most magic, and you make the vast world feel like a kingdom I shall conquer. To be found, liked, proper and the rest of that string of empty, muddied adhjectives doesn’t matter when you hold my hand and sing your honey words of hope.
One day I will send you these letters that I right from the grasses of the garden and I hope you smile, knowing how much it all means. I hope the day will not be too late, whence those words and the courage come to me.
Thank you, Mama. I love you.
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Comments
It is good to read of your
It is good to read of your care and appreciation of each other. I liked the idea of the grass shadow reminding of the moment of time. The grass blades and the sky do underline our smallness in the whole universe don't they, but the amazing thing to me is that each grass blade, like each star and each hair on my head is seen by God, who also cares for each one, and hears! Rhiannon
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