She steps forward and pulls me into a hug.
She smells like Chanel and my childhood.
The last time I remember hugging her like this, I was a teenager, late high school.
I hadn’t gotten the English grade I wanted on this paper about Hemingway. Maybe his macho, stripped down writing just didn’t connect with me, but I also wrote it when I was sick and my halfhearted efforts got me a C+.
Total disaster.
Especially back when the only people I idolized were authors. I figured I needed a good English grade to be like them.
And my personal brand was nerd.
That’s what people knew me for, the little niche I’d carved myself out at school.
Suddenly, I felt like a fraud.
Like I hadn’t just let myself down, but everyone else around me.
But instead of getting mad and saying I should’ve studied harder or been more focused during the exam, Mom just hugged me, stroked my hair, and told me there were more important things than grades.
Then she’d straightened up and braided my hair.
We watched an Audrey Hepburn movie with popcorn. For a moment, everything was right with the world.
I’m an adult now.
My problems can’t be fixed by a big hug and a movie night, but I have that same childlike sensation when I linger in her arms.
If she just holds on a little longer, maybe the heartbreak will go away.
Maybe I’ll be okay.
It’s tantalizing enough to hang on, to make this hug last.
My eyes burn and I know there’ll be no holding back my muffled sobs.
It’s like she senses the oncoming storm, rocking me from side to side.
“I know, baby girl,” she murmurs, just like she did when I was even younger—a child, really. When I’d scraped my knee and she had to clean the scrape and bandage it up.
The alcohol was the worst part.
I cried then, unashamed, never feeling like I had to hide my emotions from her like shiny rocks from a magpie.
She rocked me then just like she’s doing now, telling meshe knows.
Calling me her baby girl.
Holy hell, I’d forgotten this.
The older I’ve gotten, the more she’d get hung up on my appearance, my weight.
Puberty came late, and she never had my body shape.
I doubt she ever had my self-confidence issues either.
But when I was a kid…
