The Daughter

My mother came and filled my home with Home. She filled the drafty corners, the uneven floorboards, and the spaces between the cabinets. She made it smell like warm curry, fresh baths, coffee and tea. She brought home rum raisin ice cream and hummed in the kitchen. She washed my back and brushed my hair and laughed; her tiny body curling up into wrinkles, her tiny bones full of joy.

In the waiting room at the hospital we laughed at her bottom dentures. She pulled them up to look like vampire teeth. When she took off her top dentures to reveal her only two teeth, caving in her face, expecting me to laugh (like my brother would), I cried so hard it swelled like laughter. The tears would not stop. The doctors thought it was pain. My beautiful, radiant mother: toothless and aged. Her youth did not match her body; every year I could see my grandmother in her face. Every year her grey spread like a lions mane.

I showed her off. I photographed her daily. I recorded her banter. I was completely in love with my mother, she was all mine for the first time, and every moment I wanted to savor. I wanted to preserve her youth before she boarded the plane and pierced the sky.