Crying on the Circle Line

May 1.

"May I begin?", you ask yourself, out loud, before you started writing this. But you know there is no choice.

Elsewhere in the city, it is bank holiday Monday. A spirited rebellion takes flight as people abandon their Monday obligations, filling up parks, pubs, bars and dance floors in a vibrant migration like of butterflies bewitched by their favourite May blooms.

You are on a FaceTime call instead. Your phone's corners strain to contain the oceans that separate you from your parents, and your brother from them. Your family has gathered on the screen to celebrate your mother's birthday. Their voices harmonise to sing her the song in a language that holds significance only within those verses. Instead, you are staring at the unmoving ceiling that resembles an unchanging sky, letting time stumble and slur as if intoxicated by edible seconds. Letting a thought infuse you like coffee liqueur on empty stomach.

She never asked you to do better at school, made your school projects, pushed you for competitions, or did anything that differentiated a child from children. Did she not know mothers need to ask their kids how their day went? Or how she should teach you to swim; it's an essential life skill, after all.

You can't keep your head above water if you never learned how to swim, and it was fine until you started sinking. But you know that it's never the suffocating depths that engulf you; it's the heaviness that resides within your heart. You are not without joy, but you are in pain more often. And some days, tired of carrying your life in a wheelbarrow, you just lie down on the grass to let your heavy heart beat, always trailing behind, unable to catch up.

And out of nowhere, you're pulled back as a hand tries to reach through the screen, bearing a slice of cake. You know it's an attempt to uphold a cherished tradition that has defiantly withstood the test of time. So you yield, parting your lips to welcome the illusion of your mother feeding you the cake. And it isn't that day, or the day after, but some days after that, you cry on the tube.

It's on the circle line and it's summer, the sun lights the wrong side of your face. Scrolling through your photo album, you settle upon the many screenshots that usually mark the culmination of those virtual gatherings. Screenshots, which now have become feeble substitutes for family photos. It's the circle line, and the cool air from the AC desalinates your pain on your cheeks. This time you are moving, the ceiling is moving, and you're daydreaming the journey away.

You dream of your next life, beginning with her again. In this, you will give her more time. More time to learn. To be a mother. You won't hold her tight to say goodbye, hear her wheeze from her chest tightened since she attended her last day at school at 11. And neither will you cry so hard you feel as soft as a newborn. Together, you will laugh, unravelling the stitches that bind your lips. And only cry to shed the weight in your hearts. Her language won't fail like her hips, and your heart won't be too loud in her absence.

There was no choice because it's summer and your words cascade like raindrops on parched ground, evaporating before they can quench your thirst. So you have to write them down and it is while writing this you realise you were not crying because you missed her, of course you miss her. It was the realisation that lazily nestled upon your shoulders, stubbornly refusing to shift that maybe -

Your mother was learning to be your mother just as you were learning to be her son.