My most loved Lia,
I sometimes kid how unfair it is that you didn’t get anything from me features-wise. The chinky eyes, the milky skin, nose, lips, hair, inches and centimeters, even your scent – all from your Daddy’s side.
I examine all ten years of you bear-snoring on the bed. The body a constellation of plane and bus rides, tears and tantrums, tails and heads of dirt-poor days with only a single egg on the table, a palm on the forehead feeling for fever, your arms sheeting me in lonesome moments riddled with unasked questions; spongy forests, long silences while I type away and you sketch obscure anime figures, you behind me on the e-bike gushing about a crush or lamenting an argument with a friend, your toothless mouth uttering “mama” as your first word, your angsty tween self navigating complex ones like “audacity”.
Your stubborn, blunt (read: crass), determined, freedom-hungry Aries roots sometimes clash with my sensitive, autonomy-loving, oft-righteous Scorpio ways. Still, on school forms the only boxes you check out of a dozen are “Tells problems to mother” and “Close relationship with mother” when asked: Describe your family relationship at home.
Every day you ask me, “Do you love me?” Unfailingly, I answer “always”. But today, with salt on the sunlit pillows, I follow that through with, “And I don’t really care if you did not get your looks from me. I carry your spirit and you carry mine. Together we got years, all their tides rising and receding, our feet meeting them on the shore, side by side. Always.”
With you always through the years,
Mama
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