cotton blanket

dear mamma,

I’m sure you already know there’s a terrible heatwave here. Obviously you do, you check the weather here before you check what it is where you are. The heat feels unbearable here, mamma. It is not like India, where it is too hot to be sitting in the living room sipping chai and laughing over ants together, nor is it like Qatar, where you make those popsicles I’ve loved since I was a kid. They’ve got Robinson’s here, but it just doesn’t taste quite the same.

You left a thin cotton blanket here when you dropped me off because you knew that I’d feel less alone with a blanket. That even if it was boiling, I wouldn’t go to sleep without one. I finally took it out today, and it smelt like home, like jasmines and incense and that detergent you use that I enjoy complaining about whenever you do the laundry. I feel so much lighter than I have in such a long time falling asleep with the blanket. I think I just want to come home, mamma.

I try and understand who we are as people, mamma, whether we’d have been friends if I were not your daughter. I suppose it’s silly thinking about that, because I am fortunate enough to have been your daughter. I am trying to understand how we love each other and every single time I come up with the conclusion that you love selflessly. If I truly had to learn how to love without consuming, I’d learn from you, even though I know that I’d never love the way you do.

I say we do not understand each other whenever we fight but you’ve understood me when I was a baby and all I could communicate in was cries and unintelligible shrieks. I know sometimes we fight like venomous scorpions, constantly stinging and scarring, yet I also know that it is you I call when I’m falling apart piece by piece because of my own fear at 12:00 am in the night, and you pick up every single time, regardless of the time difference.

I speak of bravery, but with your love, I exhibit such funny acts of hypocritical cowardice. I am selfishly terrified of calling you when I am falling apart. I know we’re both so capable of hurting each other, and sometimes we do, but maybe our love isn’t the absence of the claws, but knowing that we’d never use them against each other. So why am I so afraid that they exist in the first place? I forget they even exist when you take me in your arms when I go to sleep, like you’ve always done.

You are a selfless thoughtful woman, mamma. I know how much you’ve given up for us. I wonder about everything you could’ve been in a different life. You’ve showed up everywhere for me, every dance recital, every guitar performance, you make the world stop when I’ve got exams, you make sure I eat well, you drive me everywhere, you heal me so beautifully sometimes when I am upset, and I know for a fact you often forget about getting things for yourself but you never forget about me. You know these little things about me that I don’t even say out loud.

So why do I constantly find myself trying to explain who I am to you? Is it because I’ve grown up? Is it because when I grow up I start belonging to you less and I start belonging to the world more? Does this mean that we can be friends now, instead of simply mother and daughter? Do you like who I am? I am so deeply sorry for who I am to you sometimes. I know that I consume, consume, and consume. I hope you do know that I love you.

I am tired mamma, I really am. I just want to go home. It feels so foreign to say, because it is only recently that I have begun to look at you like a place of refuge from the world again. Is this what missing someone so deeply does to a person? Or is this just me telling you that I cannot start belonging to the world more than I should belong to you? That I will always be your child. That I’m so sorry I’m flawed and I do hurt you, and that I truly hope you are able to like me (not just love me), despite all of that. That when I’m done being an adult, when I’m done being who I’ve turned myself into, I end up being the exact same child I was when I was five, asking you to kiss me goodnight.

Anyhow, like our drill always goes, I’ve slept well mamma, I’m not sick, I am taking care of myself, there’s beautiful people in my life that are there for me. I can’t wait to see you when I get home.

with lots of love,

your baby girl.