Enarete

You walk through the parking lot. People hurry in a pre-dinner rush, and your eyes traverse the crowd, finally landing on a pair. The younger one is rolling her eyes at whatever the older of the two has to offer. You do not wonder about girl’s age – she can’t be older than fourteen, in spite of heavy make-up begging you to think otherwise. But you do wonder how old this habit is. If it was long in the making.

What annoys this girl? Is it the dinner? The grades? The woman? Has the woman always looked so tired? Did it start with her dinner plans? Her job? Her girl?

But you cannot ask such things out loud, of course. In the end, it is rude to talk about someone else’s mother. So you brush past them and enter the store. There is nothing you particularly need, but the cold is obnoxious, and humans seek warmth by default.

Babies in strollers, girls in pairs, women with ringed fingers, aging and aged dames. What will they be having tonight?

Will the toddler not be breastfed again? Will the girl gobble the chocolate bar down before she absolutely has to come home? Will the woman poke at that premade salad, while everyone else at the table criticizes the dish that she’s labored over? Will the oldest of them cover her rotting teeth with a lip, like a proper lady she was told to be?

You wonder if they wonder where it all started, though you already know that almost every living thing starts with a mother giving birth.

Raising a child is a Sisyphean task almost, if Sisyphus flaunted his skill only after receiving his punishment from Olympus. And just maybe, you are nothing but a boulder. A stone-cold emotionless and motionless thing with no regard for the scars you are leaving. The process is almost soothing – that after so many years both of you still climb up that hill. She never kicks the rock in frustration, never abandons it. Her own mother did, but your mother knows better.

She is better for it. She makes sure that you know it. You are so proud of her, more proud that she ever could be.

Yet, in spite of it all, you are not united in this search for boundless bliss from above, but instead the mutual fear of hostility in the abyss below.

She hates you for the physic and life she’s sacrificed. You hate yourself that she had to.

You loathe her for ruining the meaning of your first word. She loathes herself for the fact that it will never sound the same.

She probably wishes you never existed in the same way you secretly pray she stopped to.

Leopards cannot change spots. But perhaps the casket does straighten the hump.