Little Feet

It was easier back then to do what is hard to accomplish now.  School was somehow easier when we were rich.  We took vacations.  Me and my mother fought easily but forgave even easier and took mother-daughter outings in which we laughed and ate lots of food together.  It's not like that anymore.  Now we fight easy, ending in screaming and crying, and not talking to each other for the rest of the day.  Sometimes, she doesn't interact with me for months on end.  It has gotten so badly that for three months, I had to pay my own school lunch fees because she would refuse to.

We still take mother-daughter outings, but it is not the same.  I have to step careful to make sure we don't fight.  I don't tell her anything about my life anymore.  She thinks she's still a part of it, which is funny, but she is only in the part of my life in which I make up stories to tell her so that she does not get angry.  We don't eat lots of food together anymore.  The reason is always one of two things:  I am too fat, ("You're getting kind of jibang," she says, one of the only Korean words she still remembers from her childhood.  The word for fatty foods.) or I am not hungry. ("No, really, I'm just not feeling it right now," I tell her.  Sometimes I haven't eaten in days.  Sometimes, I'm trying not to eat for days.)

Things are different now.

She is still my mother, and she still tries to provide me with what I need.  But things are different now.  Between us, our money situation, my father being home now.  Things have changed, and instead of accepting them and moving to fit our own needs, we stray.  We stay apart, floating throughout our house as if avoiding each other.  We hug, and I kiss her on the cheek, but I hold my breath, and she does the same.

We do not adapt.  Instead, we stand in our own separate ponds, waiting.  As if we keep standing there, still, the waters will magically merge and we'll be a family again.