Mother's Love

Last week, I went to see my mother. I drove for two days with my daughters behind me...another girls' adventure...until I finally rested in her presence. This homecoming was not to the house where I grew up, but to the place where she lives...truly home.

The plan had been to stay with her, dine with her, retire with her, wake with her. I wanted to repose in her comfort. I had been so tired. My older brother, however, unknowingly stole that from me. He had married and moved back to our native country some years ago and had returned a month prior to my arrival to visit with and take care of my mother and our suddenly stranded young sister-in-law. My girls and I stayed in a hotel just a few minutes away.

Still, I enjoyed her. After breakfast at the hotel restaurant overlooking American Airline's landing runway, we went to her and I took my place in her small kitchen while my daughters entertained themselves with books, movies, Wii games, or making fun of their uncle. Our talks started small, as I helped myself to the plate of freshly cut mangos picked a few days ago from a friend's backyard or a ridiculously sweet orange purchased from the fruit cart that comes around the neighborhood about once a week.

Gradually, our conversation would move amoeba-like into larger topics...my new peace and freedom, my husband's reluctance to let go, my children's adjustment, her writing, my little brother's unspeakable pain. Afterwards, my girls and I would head out for our daily outing, sometimes with my older brother and his wife (who arrived a couple of days after we did) and sometimes just the three of us. In the evening we would return to find the apartment smelling of my childhood...every night a traditionally home-cooked dish from the cuisine of our country. I wanted to melt into her warmth...the aroma of her care, for this is how she loves. This is how she tends to those in need...she cooks.

I cleaned up after dinner, as I had done as a child, and our night turned into more conversation and board games with the children. Late into the night, I would reluctantly gather up the girls and make the eight minute drive to the hotel, all of us finally sinking into beds overstuffed with fluffy pillows hours past our bedtime.

...but it was vacation, and I drank my fill of mother's love.