The box

When I hung up the phone, an immense rage took over my body. I am not one to throw stuff around the room or crash the dishes on the floor because I'm the one who had to pay for them, but right then, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to break it all, smash it all, make it disappear from the face of the Earth. But I am moderate, so I kicked the door instead and hurt my toes. That's what I did: I hurt myself trying to get satisfaction. Now that I think about it, I realize it was stupid: the door had no blame, no matter how frustrated I was. My mother was to blame, but I was not about to kick her. That was out of the question. "I was raised better than that," I told Peter, walking in circles around the living room. I could feel the energy mounting, and breathing was difficult. I felt I needed to run or jump, but simultaneously, I felt someone was pulling me to the ground. 

"You should calm down," he told me. Poor Peter. We've been together for fifteen years, and he still cannot manage these moments despite them not being so rare in my life. Or maybe he does, and that's why we haven't split, no matter what the Universe threw at us... or my mother. Yes, it was my mother's fault. Again.

That evening, things had started as usual. She called and complained that I should be the one to call. She said that as her daughter and mother of her grandchildren, I should know better. Despite my day at work having been bananas, I was not in the mood to discuss or correct her. I was exhausted. She was not interested in what I had done or what I felt. She wanted to talk and to be heard, so I passed the phone to my daughter.

"Talk to grandma," I told her, knowing perfectly that the call had started badly. Sometimes, I do that: I remove myself from the picture, thinking things will improve, but that does not work very often. It took less than two minutes until the screams and cries started—not a record, but quite an achievement. 

My mother lives in the same house, town, and country where I grew up. I live with my family thousands of kilometers away. Since I became an adult, I've lived away from her, which has been a blessing most of the time. Until our separation, we had lived together, but I don't think we were close. She never was my confidant or my best friend. She was my control freak and perfectionist mother, which made me what I am now: someone like her who does not want to become her. It makes sense in my head, but sometimes it isn't easy to achieve. Since I had kids, though, something changed: her interests changed. She was not interested in me but in what I did to her grandchildren. The first discussion was about the birthing plan- yes, discussions about children started even before the little ones arrived. According to her, my daughter should be born in her town, and she should be the one to help me with the baby. The father could visit on the weekends, she said. I did not care about her plans or ideas; I had my child on my terms, and she visited, bitter and resentful because I did not obey her. She said I did not listen to her, but the problem is that I did. I listened to her, and I did not like it.

Since my daughter was born, there have been discussions about anything and everything, from creams and diapers to clothes and hairpins. Still, her favorite topic is- without any doubt- my inability to make my kids learn my mother's language. At home, we have two languages, a country with a third one, with friends sharing a fourth. Still, she focuses on correcting the kids' grammatical structures whenever they speak on the phone. She does not want to know how different our lives are from hers. She does not care. That was that night's discussion; that's how I got frustrated, yelled at her, kicked the door, and hurt my toe. She told me I was a bad daughter and a bad mother, and I lost it once more in my life. 

"I'm leaving," I told Peter. He was sitting on the sofa, wondering when I would stop walking around the room, and I caught him by surprise. I tend to mumble and cry in those kind of moments. I'm not the one who tends to make strong statements.

"Where to? It is late now," he said.

"Not now, tomorrow. I'm going to see my mother, and I am going to break up with her."

"You are going to what?" he replied. He stood up and put his hands on my shoulders. I stopped walking and looked at him as calmly as I could.

"I'm going to my mother's place tomorrow. I will break up with her and pick up the last of my things. Face to face, that's how you do it."

I think I scared him because he took his hands off me very slowly and asked me:

"Are you sure? This is not the first time..."

"It will be the last," I replied. "I cannot stand it anymore. I don't want to do this anymore. We're done."

I kissed him on the cheek and said goodnight. I grabbed my phone and went upstairs. I emailed my boss, telling him I would be out for a few days, and booked an early flight. I packed a few clothes in a backpack and went to bed. I had never been so sure of anything in my life. 

The next day, I called a cab. I kissed Peter goodbye and watched the kids sleep. There was no point in telling them what was about to happen. On my way to the airport, I thought about the last time I had traveled alone with such a heavy heart. It had been many years before when my aunt called me telling me my father was in the hospital, dying. That time, I crossed countries, hoping to be able to say goodbye to him, but I was late. This time would be different. I would say goodbye on my terms.

The flight was a nightmare. The coffee felt like a stone in my gut, and for the first time in many years, I thought I would need the paper bag in front of me. I held to it for the whole flight and took it to the car rental office despite not being sure if I was about to throw up or have a panic attack. Once I got into the car, the GPS absorbed all my energy and attention, and the brown bag became my driving buddy for the next few days. 

I hate driving. I always get lost. I nailed the route that day, but it did not make me feel better. When I parked in the street and looked at the orange brick building, I thought about everything I was about to say and the speech I had rehearsed in my head over and over in the airport, during the flight, while driving... I rang the bell of my mother's apartment, and when she realized I was there, she sounded thrilled. She opened the downstairs door, and I entered the building and the elevator that would take me to the fourth floor. When the door opened, she looked at me but was looking for something else. Someone else.

"Where are the kids?" she asked.

"They are at school; I needed to do some paperwork urgently," I replied.

I lied. I needed time to pick up my things so I would not break the news and let her kick me out of the house before I could gather my things. I had a plan, and I needed to follow through.

I left my backpack in my old room and looked around. Things were the same as ever. I had left that place more than twenty years before, and nothing had changed. I felt sick in my stomach and remembered the brown paper bag sitting on the passenger seat of my rental. 

"What could be so urgent you couldn't call before? She asked. "I was about to leave now to school..." 

"My passport." I lost it and need it for a long flight, for a work trip. 

"You should be more careful," she said.

"I know, Mum. I will take care of it this afternoon, and tomorrow I'll return home."

"This is your home too, you know?" she replied.

"Yes, mum, I know." 

My stomach was killing me. Looking at her was killing me. 

"Do you want to have some breakfast?" she asked.

"No, thank you. I ate at the airport," I replied. "Don't you have classes today?"

"Yes, but I can stay with you..."

"No need to, Mum, we'll have lunch together."

"OK then, I will go now, but later we'll speak, right?"

"Right."

My mother picked up her things and left the house. Since she had stopped working, she took classes in one of the town's community centers. It helped her to feel active and connected to others. 

Once alone, I moved quickly. I did not have much time. I knew what I wanted: photos, letters, and one of my old diaries. I checked the wardrobes, but there was nothing in there. On top of the bookshelves, I found two shoeboxes with letters and my childhood photo albums. I gathered everything on top of my old bed and kept looking, but I needed to figure out where my journal could be. The little black book was the last piece of a very personal puzzle, and I was determined to find it. I looked everywhere in the house and remembered another place, the storage room on the top of the building. That had always been a dark and humid room I did not like, but my mother had used it through the years to keep old stuff.

I used to call that place the room where things would go to die, such as my old bike, which had rusted in the winter, or my childhood reports that had become a moldy mush after years spent in a cardboard box. It was time to visit that place again. I got the ket from one of the drawers in the kitchen. The same place it had always been in. I walked to the storage area and opened the door. When I entered the room, a terrible smell hit my nose, but I was determined to get what I needed. I had teenage kids. I had smelled worse. The light was broken, so I used my phone flashlight and looked around. There were some old carpets, toys, yellow books on one of the shelves, and many cardboxes. Some were soft because of the humidity, and there were black spots in others, but one seemed suspiciously new. That's the one I took out before I closed the door behind me. The box was taped and clean. It had been placed there very recently; I was sure about it.

I opened the box in my old bedroom, and even if I was alone in the house, I closed the room door. I did not even bother to look for a pair of scissors. I removed the tape using my nails and my bare hands, and only realized how stupid that was when I cut myself with the tape and my hand started to bleed. I looked at the little blood stains in the box and decided to wash my hands. Considering what was about to happen, the last thing I needed on top of it was an emergency tetanus shot.

I took care of the hand and returned to the box, which seemed to be waiting for me, semi-opened and lying in the middle of the room.

Surprisingly, when I opened it, I saw more photographs, letters, and journals. I was in many of those photos and recognized the handwriting in those letters, but I did not know to whom those journals belonged. Worse even, I knew none of those objects belonged to that house, to me or my mother. That box was full of my father's stuff.

I opened the journals. The handwriting was the same as in the letters. My father had written them. I looked at the photos, still in the same frame I had seen many years before in one of his houses. What was all that doing there? I kept digging and found my old journal, the one I had been looking for. I was relieved because I had seen everything I had looked for but was also puzzled because I had found more than I wanted. 

My parents had separated when I was one year old. They had never lived close to each other after that. They had always had a lousy relationship, and they did not speak much, not even before he died, surrounded by the ones he loved. Why was there a box full of his things in my mother's place? I opened the letters. I read them and looked at the dates. I had never seen those before, even if they were addressed to me. He spoke about his trips, business, and the people surrounding him... I had never seen that. I didn't know those details of his life. I kept on reading until the letters made no sense. The things he spoke about, the dates... I put the letters in order on the floor. It made no sense. It couldn't.

The door opened. My mother looked at me and gasped, horrified when she saw all the papers on the floor: the photos, the letters, the journals...

I looked at her. My hands were trembling, and I thought I was about to pass. With one of the letters in my hand, I stood up. I gave it to her. I looked for the air to enter my system. I needed to breathe, but the air was gone. I looked at her, I looked into her green eyes and said:

"Is he alive?"