We dropped my mother off at the airport early this morning. I joked that we left her like a rolled-up newspaper being mailed away, though the truth wasn’t very funny—I didn’t even get to hug her goodbye. The drop-off area was too busy, too crowded, I was frazzled.
The airport always feels like it loops in circles: parking, drop-off, parking, drop-off, that’s what everyone was doing. My dad tried to find parking at one point, swerving at the last second to change lanes to try to get to where we needed to go and nearly hit some cones while my mom and I threw directions at him from both sides. We ended up right back where we started and so we changed plans. Rather than try to park, we unloaded the luggage at the drop-off zone as quickly as possible. I walked with her a short distance before turning back and hurrying to the car like she told me to, where my dad sat waiting with a tense expression.
Afterward we parked a few minutes away near the Star of India until my mother could get checked in for certain. The harbor smelled salty but it was a pleasant temperature with a light breeze. Lots of joggers half-clothed. That’s where I met the world’s cutest grey seagull. She had tiny white speckles across her face and passed my “skittish test”: joggers and even a dog passed within a foot of her, and she didn’t budge. That was my sign that I could get close enough for a picture. I’d never forgive myself if I missed out on a cute bird photo.
Since I’m still shaking off this cold/flu, I didn’t stay out long. My mom’s trip has been planned for months—ever since her other sisters passed away. Now she only has one left, and they decided not to wait any longer. No one knows how much time they really have. So my mother decided she wanted to go see her sister.
Unfortunately, I came down sick just a week before her trip, so I spent days avoiding her, disinfecting everything in the house, even myself. It worked. She left healthy, and so far everyone else in the house is healthy too.
But now that she’s gone, I miss her more than I expected. It’s only two weeks, but it feels longer than that. Today is just day one. It’s been years since I’ve been without her this long. She’s gone on trips before—to Texas at one point to visit her other sister when she was alive and well. One time to my sister’s wedding —but it’s been so long since something like this has happend. So two weeks feels like forever.
Her leaving made me think about what it will be like when she passes away someday. Losing my aunts one by one has been a constant reminder that death doesn’t wait for anyone. And one day, it’ll be my mother too.
We don’t always get along. She didn’t handle my abuse well—she blamed me. She holds old-fashioned views that grate on me, especially about women. But I’ve come to realize that some of those hurtful things weren’t really her voice—they were echoes of what her own family told her when she was abused. She was told it was her fault too. That little girl inside her never healed, and her pain spilled into how she treated my own past with sexual abuse at the hands of family.
It’s not an excuse, but it’s helped me understand. I could stay angry forever, but I don’t want to live that way. Understanding feels lighter.
And through it all, I do love her. I wouldn’t miss her if I didn’t. Love outweighs the disagreements, the hurt, and the old wounds to some degree I guess. Enough that I still have a fondness for her.
After the airport, we stopped at my grandmother’s. Her yard is full of fruit trees she says are thirsty, though she won’t water them out of fear of the bill. We raked the fallen fruit while the air smelled faintly sweet and sour. Fermented Guava. When my dad moved the trash cans, a whole crowd of crickets scattered across the little brick path, diving into gopher holes. I scooped one up and set it gently beneath a tree.
I’ve always thought crickets are cute—their bead-like eyes, their tan bodies, their twitching antennae. My dad says a whole group of them lives in a crack in the garage wall. They chirp there, and even though they leave little specks of cricket poop everywhere, I can’t help but find them charming.
Grandma doesn’t seem to mind the crickets either. After we watered her plants, she pressed twenty-five dollars into my hand, then a minute later asked, “Did I give you the money?” She’s been more and more forgetful. She even asked my dad how many kids he had, forgetting about my brother—the one she adores far more than me. Mexican families often put more value on sons. When I was born, she even told my mom I must belong to the mailman because “men in this family don’t have girls.”
It used to sting, but now it just feels sad. Her words, like my mother’s, come from her own history—how she was treated, what she was taught her worth was as a woman.
Her age hasn’t helped her already hard life she has had. She still smiles, still laughs, but you can see her slipping. She counts her money at the dining table over and over, sometimes accusing my dad of stealing. She just learned she’s almost a hundred, as if the years had snuck up on her.
Age comes for everyone. Even for her—the fiery, sharp grandmother of my childhood. Age is rarely kind.
Oh, and one last cute critter I saw was a golden retriever inside the CVS we stopped at on the way home. The second he saw me, his eyes lit up and he tried to pounce, tail wagging like mad. He was bursting with energy, all excitement. I joked afterward that I almost got mauled to death by him. Honestly, he was just ridiculously sweet even if clearly untrained. He choked himself trying to get as close to me as possible.
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