Today I said good bye to my mother. Today I said good bye to today´s mother. To my mother of today, not of 3 years ago when I left, not the one of January next year when I will be back. The today one, the one I just 20 minutes ago said good bye to, she is the one who has been so so gently kissing my cheek all day, telling me how much she loves me and looking at me so tenderly. She is the one that finally understands that I am her little girl even though she still has no recollection of having raised me. She is the one that understands that she doesnt understand and so she just tucks my arm into her arm and leans on me. She knows that her friends came to have pizza at her house tonight and that they are all talking to eachother because she doesnt know how to talk to them. She knows.

She has a new toy, a small duck on a keychain that has a tiny button that makes the duck go "cuac!" when she presses it. She can never find the button and just presses it´s head instead and gets frustrated. We have been working on remembering where the "cuac" button is for the last two days and luckily now she mostly remembers. So, when her friends were eating pizza in her house and she was so happy to have them here but wasn´t part of the conversations, she would say "oh yeah, well..." and push the duck button. "oh yeah, well cuac!...that´s what I think about that!" and this will crack her up. And her friends will laught too, sort of nervously and she will feel like they are all laughing at her joke. But I think she knows this too. There is an expression that passes quickly at the end of the other expressions that tells me that she knows she has just done something very rediculous because she can`t. She can`t do what they do. Because she has always been brave this way. She throws her ego out the window in order to enjoy herself. She doesn`t give a shit what you think.

This is the mother I said good bye to today. I dont know who the mother I will say hello to in January will be. She may not remember my name, she will definatly be using words even less acuratly than she does now. But she has been so happy and sweet lately, not half as worried or tense as the mother I met again in February for the first time in 2 years. This mother will feel very lonley when she finds herself spending her days alone again. How will that lonliness shape her? Why am I leaving?