ingrate

i cannot remember my mother ever hugging me - spontaneously. without me coiling around her like ivy, refusing to be shaken off. which was a technique i used for awhile before i developed a sense of self-worth.

i cannot remember even one kiss in 25 years - errant or planned (like on a birthday).

she kisses me now - when i am about to walk through the gateway that gets me on a plane to far away. but i don't think it matters much.


is it any wonder now that i am uncomfortable with touch? and at the same time - that i crave it like the desert craves rain?
like oxygen?

broken record

when i was 4-5 yrs old, i stepped on a pile of clothing on the sofa and split my grandfather's beloved LP in two, which was hiding under all the mess. my mother was devastated by the loss - and anger. she foretold a doom that never came (when your nana finds out, he will kill you, he will kill us all). then she looked at me like i had crushed her meticulous sandcastle underneath my feet: with so much unnecessary regret - which perhaps had nothing to do with a broken record. i was a child already wobbling under the enormous question of what would happen to this one - so plain, so dark? i could not begin to imagine how i would ever make it up to her for breaking her .. reality.. in two. i never have.

touched

i remember the times when mr.b would touch my right shoulder while standing behind my left - just to make me look for him in the wrong place.

at the beach

i was busy staring into the endless ocean when a little girl waddled toward me on baby feet at rehoboth beach last summer. she was scarcely three. her mother watched her approach me. as did i. she said: you shoud not be afriad to go into the water. she said this while struggling to keep her balance on shifting sand. i replied that i couldn't help being afraid. she extended her chubby arm at me and took hold of my fingers: hold my hand. i will go with you. i was surprised by her warm palm against mine.
she sounded almost truimphant as she assured me further: it's not at all scary. you can pee in your pants when u r in the water and nobody can tell. see - i just did.