And with that very sentence, Alice Sebold swept me away into her tale, The Almost Moon, about the obsessive relationship between a mother and her daughter.
As the dust of my exams have settled, I have been blessed with some quiet time. And so, I’ve been doing some reading.
Yes, I may seem like a social creature who loves to be surrounded by people, but when it comes down to it, I truly like being alone. I like to fix my own lunch, and hear water drip from the leaking cistern in the toilet. The very knowledge that the house is completely empty comforts me. It becomes my own territory. With all the windows closed, except for the ones in the kitchen, I can step out of the bathroom with barely any clothes on. I dress with the door open, knowing that no one’s prying eyes, especially my mother’s, can steal a glimpse.
When I am completely alone in my house, I suddenly realise how free I feel. The air around me is so still. I am free from everyone’s smothering presence, their voices, their musings. It is the precious few hours I can spend alone, away from demanding humanity, shacked up like a hermit, lost in my own thoughts.
And as I sit alone and marvel in the wonder of being alone, it hits me: My mother and I have an overwhelming relationship.
I knew from the start, ever since I became thirteen, that my mother loved me with a fierce, unreasoned passion that i could never fully grasp. I told her once, that I could never love her as much as she loved me, that I couldn’t love as much as she could. We were different from other mother-and-daughter pairs: When we fought, my mother was a mean bitch who could stand there in cold blood and watch me vomit helplessly on myself. I was 14. I cried till my dinner came pouring out right before her; she continued ironing her shirt and didn’t even flinch when I retched.
And in better times, we’d hug each other tight, again and again, several times a day. “I love you,” I’d say, and she’d kiss my cheek. I couldn’t imagine life without her; she was the best mother, friend and confidant in the world.
Loving and hating, over and over again. I’d kiss her, then I’d poke holes in her pictures and imagined running away from home, delighting in the pain it would inflict on her. Or sometimes, in an argument, I’d visualise battering the bowl I was holding over her head. We were two headstrong individuals, each stubborn and outspoken, neither wanting to give in. My mother, breaking away from her Indian family by her conversion to Christianity, raised me to be a simple and submissive daughter. But no, I was to be like her. Headstrong.
Of course, I hope the day never comes that I’ll have to actually break the bowl over her head. I hope my mother and i will grow apart, more distant in our relationship. once, my secrets were hers, and her secrets were mine. but now, I have my own secrets. I come home at late at night and she has stopped waiting up for me. She comes home after I go to bed and I don’t question her whereabouts. I can feel the overpowering love petering out, and finally I have space to unfold my wings.
When all is said and done, slipping away from my mother came easily. Well, maybe not.
