Broken shards and kintsugi's

The ceramic cup struggles to exhale one more puff of warm zephyr as Rue’s fingers drum rhythmically against the table in monotonous beats, as the milk tea’s heat slowly seeps away to blend seamlessly with the chilly morning air, barely fogging up the large window she was leaning up against.

Her eyes stare transfixed at the vast expanse of white below her, dotted with the occasional high rising building. The snow-clearing company was down today, giving a valid excuse for the residents to stay at home and cozy up with a cup of coffee and netflix. Rejuvenation, how the fancy-ass people like to put it.

Too bad, not for Rue. Not today. Today was her birthday, after all.

She seriously hated the hype surrounding this event. Like whatchu celebrating? Being born and expecting people to… congratulate you for being born when you probably did nothing but vibe in your momas belly? 

And surprise parties? *shudders*

Dr. Mark Sloan once said, “Woah, woah, bad idea. Surprise parties are hostile, they’re dark. People jump out and scream at you, they never come to any good.” 

Rue could tattoo that on her forehead.

Sighing, she went to the place beside her bed with the one, and the only miscellaneous electrical socket in the small apartment, where her dead phone was currently getting charged. What it must be like, dying in a blink of eye but charging at a slow, slow pace? She wonders absently, and then couldn’t help the little smile forming on her lips. Yes. what must it be like?

For the whole 30 minutes, she waited for the phone calls. There weren't too many people who would call her anyways, just her boyfriend, Noah, a few co-workers and of course, her family (as in her mother). She waited for the ringing to fill the empty room, until she couldn’t wait anymore. How much time does it even take to call and wish a goddamn happy birthday?

Maybe that was the reason she hated birthdays after all.

A sigh escaped her for the umpteenth time that day as she called Noah’s cell phone, the obnoxious ringtone droning on and on like the muted howls of winds colliding in a blizzard. She’d never had fancy birthdays as a child, when she had too many friends. And she doesn't have fancy birthdays now, when she barely had people to call. She was about to cut the call when he finally picked up.

“Hey Rue” his deep voice filled her ears and her heart, and the hoarse timbre of his voice calmed her nerves a bit. 

He picked up. She thought, relieved. That's good. Everything’s fine.

“Hey Noah” she greets, and an awful giggle escapes her. She slaps a hand over her mouth, face scrunched in disgust. Where the hell had that come from?

“Hey baby” he repeats, and she frowns. Umm ookay..?

“Uh hey” she subconsciously scratches her sand-dune elbows, unsure of what else to say when someone greets you for the second time. There's no index allocated for it in the‘Etiquette 101 and how to charm people’. 

He clears his throat. “So, what is it that you wanted to talk about?”

Oh, I don't know, she couldn’t help but think. 

Just the fact that today’s my birthday? I know it’s not a big deal, and we don't have to make it one, but maybe come to my place? We can make some pizza and binge watch suits or something? 

Please?

The words get stuck in Rue’s throat, like always. She tries again.

“Umm.. I was wondering if… you know, since today is my-”

Something shatters in the background on the other end of the line, and his mumbled curses cuts her off. He speaks to someone, who answers back in a deceivingly female lilt. Rue freezes, the phone still pressed uncomfortably against her ears.

He comes back on line. 

“hey umm, sorry something’s come up. Call you la-”

“pray tell, Noah. What's the inconvenience?” she runs a hand through her hair and pinches the bridge of her nose. Rue hates her hair. The frizzy, raven locks which she inherited from her Indian mother is nothing but an absolute haggard to leave untied.

“The girlfriend keeping you from burying your face in another college graduate’s thighs, huh?” she sneers. Or perhaps it’s in despair.

Rue can feel him flinch through the phone. A pause, then he chuckles. 

“geez, I can't believe you brought this up again. How insecure can you be? I swear I’m alone right now”

She would have believed him till a few weeks back. They say the longer you are in a relationship with someone, the more you start to notice the little things you wouldn't have before. 

Like how the moles under their lower lip and under their left eye and the one near their hairline that never sees the light of day, when traced, forms the crux constellation. You notice their favorite hoodies, and put that on the top of your Christmas wish list. You spend each night teaching your poems so well about him that his name gushes out of the pen in phrases and metaphors that’ll never be about him.

Give it a few more weeks and you’ll probably pick up the eye twitches and sweaty palms every time you say you want to talk. Pick up the disinterested I-love-you's and you start to notice the signs of boredom and restlessness in your partner. Pick up how the broken shards of your relationship are not worth turning into kintsugi.

Rue would have believed him if he wouldn’t been coming home piss drunk the last few days and smelling like hard sex. She would have believed him if he came home at all.

A better woman might’ve already dumped his sorry ass for a better man. Too bad she didn't want to hassle, edit her Instagram bio again from “committed” to “happy and alone.” 

That would have been too big of a lie, and that would have made this empty, shell-like-feeling too damn real and profuse. 

And then how would she be able to keep living in her bubble of self-oblivion and ignore it?

“Sorry, I’m just tired. Call you later okay?”

She doesn't wait for a response. She’d already hung up and dialed her mom’s number in before she knew it. 

“Hey sweety, how are you?” her mother gushes on the other end, her bright, lilting voice carrying through like the first ray of sunshine during a bleak, grey morning.

Rue’s throat closed up unexpectedly, like it always did when she called her mother, because as much as it hurt her to never have her mother call on her own, what hurt worse was the unusual choice of pleasantry which was as fake as the cheer in her voice. 

Rue knew it well, that voice. She’d heard it everyday of her life for the last 20 years, until she hadn’t.

“sorry to disturb you, mom” she replies automatically.

Her mother laughs. “you’re my child, dear. What are you even saying? Call me anytime, okay” she deflects, like she always does.

“and perhaps that's the reason you forgot to call on your dear child's birthday?” 

Rue couldn't keep the bite from her words. It has been too damn long since she's moved out of the house. Couldn’t her mother be a little more genuine?

Dr Monali wasn’t laughing anymore. 

“I sent you some things via UDrop. Didn’t you... receive them today?” her quiet voice tells Rue much more than what she needed to hear. 

She looks around her room (that's the only room anyways) and checks for something which might have “some things” for her. A big, conspicuous box. Maybe a card. 

Nada. Nada.

“Right, of course you did, and yes I received them” Rue shrugs and hangs up.

For a long time, she sits with the phone pressed to her chest. The ominous silence fills the room again, and Rue wonders what it might be thinking. Maybe marveling over whether or not this will be enough to break her, whether will she take the final leap, whether or not the one room apartment complex will be inhabited again.

She wonders whether a gift would have made any difference anyway. Aren’t relationships like battery-powered clocks that eventually have to fall out of sync? Maybe she and her mother’s fell out of rhythm a long time ago, and neither took the initiative to change the batteries. 

Everything around her was starting to look the same shade of grey and brown, blurring in and out like a ugly newton’s wheel. Whatever thing her mother might’ve picked for her wouldn't have made any damn difference in this colourless void.

She hates this.

The buzzer at the front door going off jostles her out of her… morbid musings.

Grumbling about tax billings and cursing any insurance officer who might've kindly paid her a visit, she stumbled to the door and jerked it open.

Out stood a boy, not much older, in blue coveralls.

A delivery man.

From UDrop.

Blinking rapidly, she stares dumbfounded as the guy blinks and gets uncomfortable and soon starts shifting from foot to foot.

Huh, so she did send me something after all.

Rue takes the small box from the boy and goes inside, her hands trembling from dread and anticipation. She places the white wrapped on the small 3 legged table, and observes it before ripping it open. It's a simple enough box made of cardboard and bound with tape. Nothing out of the way. That was Dr Monali, her mother. Plain and to the point. 

She frowns and pulls out the cream coloured envelope from the box, her name written on the front in exuberant penmanship. She pulls out the folded letter and flips it open.

Dear Rue,

I won't bother to drone on pleasantries, since that would be a waste of time for both of us. Also, this one piece of parchment is quite expensive anyways. 

Just... believe me when I say that these 6 years have not been kind to me. Since you left after your graduation, the house speaks of nothing but my inability in parenting. I don't know where it started, Rue. I really don't. If I could, I would have never brought you to America. This unfamiliar land whose culture I’m trying to understand every day. How can children live off their parent’s love and then move away at the age of 18 so as to not be an "inconvenience” to them? Never got that, Rue.

But that wasn’t the reason in our case, was it? Neither was the fact that you demanded to be named something so western, so small, just 3 letters of emptiness that means nothing to me. Or you. Or maybe, I was the one to blame, not being trendy enough? I don't know. I just know that your disdain for me was so tangible that it even stained my love for you. 6 years ago, I convinced my heart that it was okay. That I could live without you. I was so wrong. No amount of cats could ever fill the space I’ve reserved for you, Rue.

Nevertheless, that's not the point of this letter. I just wanted to inform you that I’m going back to India in a few months. The thing is, I was never fond of it here. There, I’ve said it! Sure, I have a great job and made some lifelong friends but the truth is, it was all for you. When the anchor’s not there anymore, the ship has to glide away some time or the other. And my time’s come.

Happy birthday Rue. I know I didn't host your birthday’s at Chuck-e-Cheese all the times you were growing up. I had ever needed them, and I had just assumed that a nice dinner with your mom would have been sufficient. It's not wholly your fault, though. Did I ever bothered to understand you? I didn't.. 

I wish you’ve told me sooner than you did, Rue.

Your cool (not) mother,

Dr. Monica

Inside the box were a few tickets for the local amusement park, the pizza center and a few game shows with the note; all the events you wanted to go to on weekends.

Somewhere along the way, Rue’s eyes had filled up and flowed in a continuous stream down her cheeks. The memories were still too fresh. Every time her mother showed up for annual and sports days wearing what she would wear to her office, Rue would have died of embarrassment. Everyone’s mother wore such glamorous clothes, from Gucci and Louis Vuitton's and whatever. In Rue’s eyes, her mother wasn’t… enough. Wasn’t beautiful enough.

She’d never told her though. And neither had her mother made an approach to question her. Why would she? In Rue’s culture, if you want something, you ask for it straightaway. In her culture, Parents didn’t frequently hug or kiss or have “family time” to show that they love you. Instead, they would make your favourite food that night, or play your favourite song on the speaker to school instead of the morning news, or stay in your room the whole time you’re sick. For us, those were a thousand, more subtle i-love-you’s. For us, it's more important to show that you love someone, rather than tell them.

She had never perhaps, got this.

All these six years, she’d thought a lot if she’d been so inconsiderate that she overlooked all the days her mother took off when Rue got sick instead of just appointing a caretaker, or when they’d first moved to the states and her mother barely ate a three square meal while Rue herself gorged on rice and chicken curry as usual.

No, she hadn’t overlooked. She was just too self-serving and chose to disregard all this so her own selfish grudges would be legitimate.

Her tears refused to take a break and continued leaking down her face. The small apartment box, the grey’s and brown’s and cluttered furniture, Rue’s head pounds incessantly.

She somehow barely made it out of her house and down the stairs in the vastness shrouded in snow. Her breath puffing out in harsh exhales. These last few years, she’d done nothing but doubt her decisions. Had constantly pondered why she hadn’t bothered to pick up the shards, attempted to turn them to kintsugi. She’s wondered a lot of things and never acted on any of them.

A split second decision had her flipping her cell phone out

She paced, anxiety building up a notch with each dial tone.

“Rue? It's so late in the night. what's wrong?”

“I’m sorry, mom” Rue choked out, the dams bursting, and she could tell that her mother knew it wasn't just about calling her so late in the night.

“You got the letter” she says softly. It wasn’t a question.

She sniffed and nodded. “Mom I- You never told me and I also didn't- never thought from my damn brain-”

“Sshh it's okay. I know we both never did” For the first time, Dr. Monali’s voice sounded clogged with tears. “And there’s a reason why the heart is the only organ we can hear, my child. We’ve both been bottling up our feelings and putting them in our pockets and when they stained, we both had hoped the other wouldn’t notice”

Rue nods, even though her mother cant see her, tears blurring her sight and mind. The words seem to tumble out on their own accord. “Mom, the tickets…” she wipes her nose on her jacket sleeve. “There’s a lot of them you know. I was wondering if you’re game for a movie this Sunday”

Static on the other end. She could feel her heart sinking like a ship peppered with too many small holes. Of course it would take time. 6 years of grudge and holding back can't be unraveled in a 10 minute phone call.

Her mom clears her throat. “What about your friends?”

“I would rather spend the day with you, mum” It's not Rue’s internal dialogues this time.

At the other end of the phone, her mom laughs. And suddenly, the white’s of her surroundings seems much more colorful than anything had ever been. The phone still pressed against her ear, the stupidest of grins spreads across her face.

“It's Sunday, then” her mother agrees on the other end of the line.

For a long time, Rue again holds the phone in her hands, this time not in anxiety and desolation, but in absolute joy. Grinning, she sends a quick text to Noah. Her last text.

----

I’ve read somewhere about this feeling you know you have when you visit a place from your childhood, and for a moment, you remember it as your younger self once did, vast and endless and almost wondrous. And then your aged eyes and a height that offers you a different perspective catches up to you. and everything feels a little smaller. more tangible and mundane.

Maybe the same happens with people. we don’t remember them as they actually were. we remember them as the child in us wanted to. we recall them through eyes we had long ago. 

eyes that couldn’t yet appreciate all the other angles.

I step into the frozen ground, my boots sinking in the 3 inch snow. After an absence that was no one’s fault,⁣⁣ we would be shy with each other. It’d be awkward. Maybe our relationship, me and my mother’s, will be as ephemeral as this snow, dissolving and melting at the first hint of sunshine. But at the end, I know it’ll be worth it.

Because sometimes, some shards and pieces are worth highlighting in gold, you know.

-a narrative (not) for my ma