Up!

I want to see her today. I want to hear her laugh and see her blue eyes crinkle when she smiles. I want to feel her arms around me, her heart on mine, silently telling me that everything is okay, that I don’t have to worry about the bad day I had. When I brush my hair, I think of how I used to sit on the floor while she brushed my hair. I used to protest, used to groan and complain that I could be doing something else. Now, the phantom feeling of her fingers comforts me. How foolish I was back then, wishing time away. These days, it’s like I can feel it falling through my hands. I want to smell her perfume. I get dressed and put on an old scarf of hers that I haven’t washed.

Years ago, I’m in the backseat of the car, making eye contact with her in the rearview mirror as we drove down the familiar street in my hometown on a summer day. I close my eyes, but I can tell where we are by counting the bumps in the road. She sings Shania Twain and I tell her she has the prettiest voice in the entire world. I prop the car windows open and feel the hot air meet the air conditioning.

Today, I am alone in my apartment, and I want to see her today. I want to get ice cream with her after playing mini golf. I want my brother Marcus to be there. I want to bicker with him until she tells us to stop. I want to call her on the phone and ask her for advice when my friends go out to eat without me. I want to tell her that I’m lonely.

I want her to cook me dinner while I tell her about my day. I realize I never asked her about her days back then. I was too selfish. She was always so selfless. My dad was there, too. All four of us eating, talking.

The train isn’t crowded. Everyone is at work. A little girl is twirling on the platform. She’s wearing a tutu. The pink sparkles blur around her while she spins. Round and round and round, she goes. When she stops, she looks around wildly, whipping her head from left to right. She begins to take sharp, shallow breaths that cut my skin one by one. Her mother calls her name and the girl skips in her direction.

“I thought I lost you,” she says as she flings her arms around her mother’s legs.

The air outside the train station is thick and sticky. It always is this time of year. On days like this, I want to dive into a pool and float on my back for hours while I watch the clouds go by. My grandpa used to have a pool. It was a great big rectangle. I learned to swim and dive and flip in that pool. I spent hours in the water, racing Marcus to the shallow end while my parents and grandpa sat in the lounge chairs on the edge. Sheryl Crow played over loudspeakers. I used to wear floaties and jump into my dad’s arms from the edge of the pool. We used to beg her to go underwater.

“Get your hair wet!” We’d plead and bargain and fuss until she did. She always did.

I was seventeen when I learned she’d gone deaf in one ear giving birth to me. The doctors say it was a freak accident, that she’d had a mini stroke after birth, once she left the hospital. They couldn’t possibly have prevented it. I spent my whole life getting frustrated when I called her name and she couldn’t hear me. Annoyed that I had to switch to her good side while we walked in an echoing mall. Frustrated that she’d often whisper while we were in public, unable to gauge her volume properly. Even after I learned why she’d lost her hearing, I still got agitated at the inconvenience. A lesser woman would have snapped, would have blamed me for her affliction. She never did. We haven’t shopped together in a while.

The driver picks me up and asks me if I have any trips coming up.

“My mom and I have always wanted to go to Germany,” I say. And I have a clean conscience but an achy heart because it’s true.

“Do you have plans to go?” He asks.

“Not yet,” I say.

I walk through the vestibule and am met with the smell of familiar sterile air. Dad used to take me and Marcus with him on the weekends.

“Let’s go take Mom her lunch,” he’d say.

We’d cheer and sprint towards the car, sliding open the door, piling inside. We were so excited to go to the hospital.

Now, I see the nurse at her station and she smiles.

“You here to see your mom today?” She asks.

I nod and smile back but I won’t see her. Not really. The nurse knows this.

The woman in the bed is my mom, but she’s not really here. She breathes carefully and slowly and her eyes are closed. I want to see her smile today. She hasn’t for some time. I instinctively sit on her left so she can hear and I speak to her. The doctors say it’s good for her. She can’t reply. I’m thankful that I know her well enough to make up her replies.

I miss a person I will never see again. I take her hands in mine. They are limp and wrinkly, but they are warm and our fingers lock familiarly. Her hair is thinner than it used to be, but I still see it long and blonde. I speak and she replies to me in the same voice that softly sang along to the Shania Twain song in the car. This woman is not my mother. I love her just the same.