A Nightcap

“Good things come to those who wait.” The chide, a sagely voice whispers in my head as my thumb stopped in mid-scrolling. With gritted teeth, I heed the call. The lights behind the blinds are non-existent and the sounds of passing vehicles had become sparse. It was late and I have to rest for work tomorrow.

You're right. I placed my charging phone back on the bedside table. Always the obedient child to a formless parent, it has been like that since I could remember.

In fact, I hardly remember anything.

Upon that realization, chaos ensues; threatening to break the balance I had carefully built upon myself. My heart started to hurt within my chest as I carefully began to inhale by the nose and exhale by the mouth just as the therapist has suggested.

In a desperate task to reclaim equilibrium, my mind starts to make a conversation with myself. Questions spill all over, needing answers to anchor onto.

Where did I come from? Who was my mother?

An automatic response was impossible for the first question. However as natural as breathing, her name comes to mind: Cecilia.

She was beautiful.

"How did you know?" Another voice asked me. Its tone rang like a glint of a sharp knife hidden carefully in the depths of an assailant's jacket.

My mind scrambles to look for an answer, a response to solidify my claim but nothing comes to mind.

The wish to know urges me to swim deeper into the recesses of my mind. 

Give me a memory of her. Just something that I could see about her.

Cecilia. Cecilia. Cecilia. I repeat her name like a mantra, trying to evoke memories I had with her.

There was only silence. My mind races back to the memories I can remember.

The bitter bile in my tongue when I tried to speak the local dialect for the first time,

The hotness of my cheeks when my crush smiled at me for the first time,

The ringing in my ears as I fell face first when I was walking up the stage in my elementary graduation,

The bell-like laughter my best friends would made every time I tell a joke,

The unusual combination of minty and sour tartness of the cough medicine,

The citrus shade of the sunset after my first kiss,

and the scorch of my first cigarette burn...

These memories are not as old as I would have liked them to be. These events happened recently. My head hurt from thinking but the growing panic was trying to coax me into giving up. Sensing my fear, the voices start their cacophony again.

"Do you even know how she looks like without looking at a photo?"

"How does she sound like?"

"What was her favorite color?"

"What did she like to do on her free time?"

Truly, do you know her? Or did you just made her up in your head?

Instinctively, my hands reach out to cover my ears. Slowly, I am a child again: small and helpless as I try to stem out the noise that taunt me. As I lose my attempts of calming breaths, the familiar sting at the corners of my eyes had began and the lamp-lighted walls of my bedroom started to look blurry. My palms pressed harder onto either side of my face, stifling the noise that could only be heard by myself.

In a flash, the familiar abyss of my thoughts faces me: dark and unforgiving. My will slowly resigns to the fact that my own mind was never a friendly face to me.

"Wrong. How'd we be here if you aren't?" Another voice, a quiet one, speaks to me as I feel the strength slowly leaving me.

You're no help. Just like the others. I spat bitterly as I feel the despair of not wholly knowing who I am crawling around me, binding me in heavy chain links.

"Yes. I am of no help but I remember her." The voice says to me. Numbly, I acknowledge that this particular one seldom talks in the chorus of the others.

"Are you ready?" A firm feminine voice speaks. It wasn't as soft as the sagely voice that chides me every now and then; but it beckons me just the same.

I turn back to see knees and green heels. My eyes trail up to see a floral dress of white with green flower prints then finally a face I've always loved to look at in my photo albums.

Cecilia. My mother.

She had the darkest of brown eyes that I've ever seen. It was a kind of dark that was compelling not terrifying.

Ignorant of my enthrallment, I see her knees bend down and her face was now a good distance from mine.

"What did I tell you about socks again?" One red-manicured finger points to my shoes. My eye followed and saw my sloppily-worn white socks.

With a start, her arms reach out to my side and hugs me close, effortlessly carrying me by her hip. I feel myself being made to sit on a sofa with my feet dangling at the edge.

She removes my shoes and then my socks. Her hands bunches up one of the pair. Her hand shows me the rumpled sock.

"Bunch it up and slide it on your foot. Make sure you know which part goes to your heel." She speaks as I watch her, donning me with a sock.

"You try the other one." She hands me the other of the pair. I could feel the springy feel of her palms. The back of her hand was soft but the skin slightly translucent as I see faint veins and splotches of freckles. Her hands are warm to touch and then everything went white.

In a blink, I was back to my darkened room, my phone silently charging by the bed table.

"Thank you."

I murmured to no one in particular as my eyes trickled with tears of relief.

--

P.S. Happy Birthday, Mom.