Meri Ma

She held my cold palm with hers, while I held hers back. I was extremely angry at her and screamed at her all morning and thrown the boiled egg at the dustbin which she had to clean. Yet after all this I didn’t want to let go of her, not because I knew she would stay angry at me, I already knew she wasn’t but it was something else. While looking down at our hands which were holding each other, I failed to realize that I was shaking mildly and kept grasping her hand tighter by the time.

She lifted my chin up. She had moisture in her eyes just as mine did and a shaky smile on her face. We both knew she had commitments back at home and had to but didn’t want to. Why was it so? I had no answers but all I could do was guess.

As she walked out the ward door, it felt silent, the night around grew louder, as if all my strengths to face things that were coming along had just walked out with her. Throughout the day, my mother keeps telling me various things and some of them multiple times even, not realizing that some of it would irritate me. But today that one look at her wet eyes and shaky confident smile made me think, what if, my mother was just an older version of me?

My mother was known for her Bengali literary skills, what if she was that girl who was afraid of starting off or didn’t know how to get her work out there and was actually proud of this version of her who found one? What if she couldn’t let that beautiful nightingale like voice to use because she was held back by what the society said and now this version wasn’t scared of the society to voice her opinions? What if she was silently actually pushing me forward rather than just holding me back? What if she actually saw glimpses of her lost dreams in mine and was standing by my side and fighting as hard to keep mine?

To be very honest, my mother, I will never end up understanding her, has anyone ever? But what if that is because every day, I am turning a little bit into her?