Dear Mom

Dear Mom. I never told you this before, but it was me… it was me

It is a memory that both haunts and encourages me, that reminded me you do not say things simply because they sound nice or because you feel they are the right things to say - like you had always said (and I promptly forgot) it is your job to lead us to the river, but it is up to us to decide if we should drink.

I remember the day it arrived so vividly you were excited and told us all to come to the living room to see your newest love ,and in that room the most amazing sculpture, stood like a postcard in all its beauty, adorning the table was sculpture of a beautiful woman leading water from a pot into a lake that surrounded her (it reminded you of some lesson you had always been trying to teach me that I had not yet understood). It was her favorite piece in our home, maybe because it reminded her of home or maybe because the sound of water as it traveled reminded her of the stillness she had always tried to incorporate into her life.

It became one of the central features in our house, something that seemed so permanent.

And one day I was sweeping the floor because you had asked me to, haphazardly trying to finish in the quickest way possible, the broom moving like lightning bolting through the sky. I was moving so fast that I didn't quite see what happened. Actually I don't remember much of that moment. I looked away and when I crouched down to clear the dust from the floor - I saw it. I think that was the day I began to understand the meaning of ephemerality, how something that felt so permanent so consistent could vanish in the blink of an eye.

I was heartbroken, It felt as if it only took a single gust of wind to dissipate a lifetime of memories, I felt suspended in a tortuous space of having to tell you that it was me who had wiped out one of the few beacons you had of home that had travelled with us this far. In that moment as I carefully picked up the what once was - piece by piece, it felt as if the remnants of the sculpture acted as a metaphor for my life, how I came into this world and offered you nothing but fragments of what I could become, glimpses of who i could grow up to be and yet you loved me regardless, the first time you laid eyes on me your love was not growing as I was but in full bloom.

All of the most spectacular moments in my life, the ones that shaped who I am today, the ones I spent with you staying up through hours of the night, doing my assignments with the best impromptu teacher in the world. Were not accompanied by photographs, videos or even souvenirs, only by memory. Although the sculpture was a symbol of home it was not home to you it was simply a memory and like you used to say memory is one of the few things that transcend flesh and live purely in the mind. So I found solace between my brush and the floor staring at your favourite sculpture being reminded that just like the water in what once was a lake, life ebbs and flow.

Despite this I still feel bad, and although you always taught me the value of honesty some things are better left unsaid (and it is my suspicion that a mother's intuition has told you of my crimes). Nevertheless I cannot bring myself to say it, so i wrote it in here instead, one of the most valuable lessons you taught me shall forever remain in my head, but know that after all those years of motherly advice, the value of memory will never leave me - it was the first time I truly drank from the river you would always lead me. So I have decided to immortalize this forever.

As the greatest lesson from you to me.

From the daughter that broke your sculpture in 2003.