A Mother’s Kiss on Childhood Boo-Boos
When I was very young, my sister and I shared a bedroom, with each of our beds against the opposite wall so we’d have our own little space. One night we tried to push the beds closer to each other. That’s the night I fell off my bed. And landed in the new open space between the bed and the wall. I can still hear the sound of my body hitting the floor.
Clearly my mother heard it, too, because before I could let out a cry, she was there. Hovering over me, her hair falling in front of her face, long and dark-chocolate brown. Her eyes wide with concern, her arms reaching for me as I reached for her. She scooped me up, and held me, certainly feeling for broken bones, and she said everything was going to be okay. She was right, of course.
She said the same thing when I fell off my bike and broke my arm. She was the first to sign my cast. And when my leg got caught in the gap of the double-sided swing, she didn’t wait for my cousin to explain what happened, she bolted out the door and into the yard to get me, then carried me – carried me (I was 9!) to the car and into the ER because I couldn’t walk. She said everything would be okay, and it was. I had bruised the bone but I didn’t break it.
A Mother’s Wisdom
She even duct-taped the head back onto my favorite doll after I let her go down the slide by herself. The eyes remained looking in opposite directions but my mother said it would be okay, with eyes like that, she could see everything at once.
She was always there for me—when I needed her, before I needed her, and even when I didn’t realize how much I needed her. She’s still there, asking about me, my family, my sick cats…my friends.
I want to be there for her and know there is no way I could ever be as good a daughter as she is and has always been a mother.
Role Reversal
But now, when she needs me the most, I can’t be there at all.
COVID is keeping me from her, because even though I’ve been vaccinated and will likely be okay even if I get sick while traveling, her health is so compromised now that she would not survive if I infected her. And so I have to stay away, halfway across the country. We speak multiple times a day, when she has the energy. I ask how she’s feeling and she asks about me and my family. I tell her about my cat, Dobby, and the challenge he’s giving us about eating…because she needs to mother, and she’s so good at it.
She tells me everything will be okay and I should tell him grandma said he has to eat or she’ll break out the wooden spoon. And I tell her I’m more worried about her than I am about him. “I’m all right,” she said this morning to spare me from knowing how frightened she really is, surely not realizing I can hear it in her voice. I couldn’t let her know how frightened I am either.
“Everything will be okay,” I said and she cried. “I’m not so sure,” she said. But I told her it will be. “I know this because you’ve always told me everything would be okay. And it was. And so it will be now, you just have to say it.” She couldn’t, she said. Not this time. And so holding back the sobs of the child who fell off the bed, who broke her arm, who bruised her bones and handicapped her favorite doll, I asked her to say it for me because I needed to hear it. And so she did. And we both cried. But I know it will be. Because she said it would, and it’s always been.
