#9 I have an easy relationship with my mother
about a phone call in the February cold
I have an easy relationship with my mother.
I take a walk to the parcel shop all the way down the sunlit pavement, cold gusts of wind getting caught between my ear and the phone I'm holding, calling her to hear how her day has been.
She quickly takes a dive into the latest thing that's made her angry, skips the part of the conversation where she asks about me. I try to reason with her because this is what I always do —a force of habit, not so much a choice— it's an impulsive need to make things make sense. Just like always, she rejects it with more anger.
I have an easy relationship with my mother. I dance around her tone, more biting with every minute, with the grace and ease that I've had since I was a kid. I can dodge the increasing edge of her voice, how she raises it in my ear. I have the poise of a ballet dancer, the skill of a swimmer, gliding and moving past it, all movements I've done a thousand times.
Her voice is climbing and my chest contracts with pain. I know she will ask for more. I know she will be angry that I cannot give it to her. I know I will be the one to call her back in a couple of days. I know all of this but a small part of me still thinks maybe this time it will be different. She will understand I need to go. I will walk in the Sun.
I interrupt her to tell her I've arrived to pick up an errand, and she begins repeating she doesn't want to speak to me anymore, getting louder and louder as she says it over and over again. I have an easy relationship with my mother, I know that this is what I should expect.
I try to tell her I just wanted to give her a quick call, that I'd arrived to where I was supposed to go, can't continue the conversation anymore. She cuts me off by asking why I've called her in the first place.
I have an easy relationship with my mother. I know that she always asks for more.
The phone line cuts off and the sky is blue, sunlit, the cold air is still bursting through my ears. They hurt, my hand feels numb from holding onto a dismissed call. I have an easy relationship with my mother. I know when a conversation ends like this, it's part of the dance we do every day, a few times a week, an intermission of silence. I know she will sulk and I will wait a few days and then I will message her again, wishing her a good morning, asking how her day has been. Now I stare at my phone screen and she says “It's always the same”, I have to agree. It's such an easy relationship; the steps are always the same, we retrace them and walk them through and there is no other way to go from here.
I have an easy relationship with my mother. I know how this dance goes, I perform it with all the dedication and swiftness I learned over the years. The repetition, the anger, the bouts of frustration at the ways we dance around each other. She feels an eternal hunger I cannot feed (and nobody can), I try to give what I can (but it's never enough).
I have an easy relationship with my mother. I know what to expect. I can feel hurt, but never surprised; the shock wore off from my chest a long time ago. I contemplate what it would be like to never call her again, what it would feel like instead, what the walk to the parcel shop would've been like, fantasize what the Sun would've felt like on my skin if it was silent instead. She yells at me from seven thousand kilometers away, and this is easy. I know what to expect.
The past eight years run right under my fingertips. I have an easy relationship with my mother. As long as I accept that this is the way it is, loving her is easy. Even when the distance between us somehow feels bigger with every call that ends abruptly, another centimeter further than the seven thousand kilometers that keep us apart.
I have an easy relationship with my mother. I know what to expect. I know in a few days we'll call again, I know in a few days the line will go dead.