Mothers and Sons

My mom is coming back. For good.

Funny how the years have flown by without her. For more than half my life now, she has been living out of the country, leading her own life as I have been leading mine. And after all of these years, she has decided to come back to the Philippines. Permanently.

I am filled with anxiety at the thought of this.

We definitely have familial ties, that's for sure. She is my mother, and I am her son, after all. We are still close as much as an absentee mother and a son who is far away can be. Time and distance has not diminished the way I love and respect her. But time and distance also has a funny way of freezing another person in one's memory. It is like a photograph, a snapshot of the moment suspended in time. For me, she is still my mother who departed from home all those years ago. I have this feeling she feels the same way, too. In her mind's eye, I remain the boy from the times of past.

Unfortunately, life doesn't really work out that way. Chapters of events and experiences have been written in my book since the last time she opened it. That holds true for her, too. I now face the prospect of being with my mother who, at the same time, is also a stranger. The last time I was truly with her, she was still playing the role of the dutiful and doting mother. When she left, I was just a boy, but now she will be returning to a man who is used to living his own life. The stark-naked reality of the situation is that I am not the son that I was, and neither is she the mother that she was.

It is this incongruity between memory and reality that scares me. Huge adjustments will definitely have to be made on both sides. There might be the issues of expectations not being met, paving the way for potential sources of conflict. But what really makes me afraid is the thought that I may have already forgotten how to be a son to her, and she, a mother to me. All the what if's, the possibilities, the scenarios running through my head are sometimes enough to keep me tossing and turning in bed in the middle of the night.

These thought-demons of my own creation. They haunt me continuously.

Again and again, I simply try to remind myself: one step at a time.

One step at a time.

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Then again, I may just be worrying too much. For all I know, the transition might be turn out smoothly.

Oh, well. I guess I'll just have to cross the bridge when I get there.