Australia’s far away. Sometimes I cry wishing we could have tea together on a Saturday afternoon or go shopping at Century 21 on a Tuesday evening when they rotate their stock. I wish I could share every funny little moment with her, in the moment, instead of trying to recount them on a Sunday morning over the phone. I wish I could see what her hair looks like now and know what shampoo she’s favoring. I wish she hadn’t waited until I moved to America to tell me she loved me over the phone (and then quickly hung up before I could return the words). We can’t say it enough now, but I wish we’d been saying it all those years when she’d sacrificed and struggled and spoon-fed me her strength.
I know she knows how proud I am that she’s my mother. I sometimes break past our regular run down of who’s doing what in the family and tell her how impressed I am that she’s taking all these classes, buying houses, making friends, changing nationalities, fixing dents. I might even venture to tell her how much I miss her and how I wish she was here. I can see her smile from under her warm golden eyelids (she ditched the frosted blue years ago) as she jokingly asks “are you drunk Jess?”
I smile back as though there are no oceans, no time zones, no sad stories, and no unknown shampoos. I have her genetic balls in my handbag. And everything’s grand.
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