In my mind, my mother is always forty years old.
In November, I’ll turn forty-five.
I’m older than my mother is in my mind.
She stays young there, hurried, with her long black hair tied back and a stain of oil on her home blouse.
I’m the one who tires easily now, who puts on glasses to read the small print, who falls asleep before the movie ends.
She laughs with her mouth full.
I pick my words carefully, like good grains from chaff.
In my head, my mother is still cooking, still turning down the radio, and I watch her from the kitchen door, feeling protected by something I couldn’t have named back then: permanence.
Now I know nothing is permanent: not youth, not her voice, not the way the world once seemed simple if she touched my forehead.
I’m older than my mother in memory, yet younger than the woman I am today.
Sometimes I wish I could call her back. Not the woman she is now, but the one who was forty. To ask how she managed, whether she was afraid too, whether she felt lost even while smiling.
And I wish she’d tell me it’s okay not to know, that maturity doesn’t always come with age.
I close my eyes and tell her:
“Mother, I’ve made it this far. I’ve outgrown your age.
You’re no longer the only one who carries care and worries.
Now I hold you in my mind. Young, beautiful, immortal.”