Hole

A mother regrets the mistakes she didn't make

“Alone”, by Terence Lao

There is a hole in my heart. 

I unearthed it recently. Perhaps I finally had the courage to acknowledge there was one, like a  wart that keeps growing until you can’t ignore it.

Denial is a powerful weapon. So is justification. Over the centuries, women have armed themselves with many such weapons. Abusive marriage: it’s just an extreme form of love; am I sure I didn’t do something to trigger him? Not being promoted: I am not there yet; I’m sure they’ll do it next year.

Powerful weapons. We seldom disarm ourselves; vulnerability is a vice. 

Sometimes it takes another to show you a hole. Learn from the experiences of others, they say. But we never do. 

Gillian: I am jealous of her. 

She is in her early 30s, maybe 33. I am 49. She is taking a sabbatical. No; she is not travelling the world, nor is she pursuing her hobby turned entrepreneurial venture. 

Can you keep a secret? she asks, in a conspiratorial tone. 

Of course I can keep secrets. I am a woman. That makes her laugh.

I am leaving, she says. 

Lucky you, I say, assuming she has landed a new job, as I swirl my morning coffee with a wooden stirrer.

When? I ask.

July. 

Are you moving back to the UK? A startup?

A startup. Yeah, she chuckles, knowing well, by now, my misery at her being able to find a new job, while I have been rotting here for a decade.

I am leaving to be home with my kids. She caresses her tummy, her outturned umbilicus a visible dent on her stretched dress. 

How lovely! I can’t stop gushing with niceties, while my stomach churns. It’s not jealousy any more. It’s rage. Uncontrollable. Well, that’s great. It’s okay if you have the finances figured out, I say.

Not really. I mean, not completely, but Greg and I decided we need to do this.  

I wish her luck. We have never exchanged numbers in the past, but we do now. I go back to my desk. I look at my reflection in the computer screen, and then at the knick-knacks on my desk, accumulated over the past ten years. Thank-you cards and Christmas cards, pinned to the soft board. A printout of ‘Stay Calm’ pushed into a corner, behind a stack of papers. I am never calm. A dead plant, another dying, a hand sanitizer that came with a care pack in 2020, a massive bottle of moisturizer. Inconsequential things. On the soft board right in my line of sight, not pinned because it would leave a hole, but stuck with sellotape, is a picture of Minno and me in Victoria Park. It was taken in one of those little booths at a Christmas Carnival. We look happy. This was last year. Minno, my son, is 19.

When did he turn 19? Where was I?

In our culture, they say that before a baby is born, the soul chooses its mother. He chose me, but I didn't live up to my own expectations. I don’t know if I lived up to his. He does say I am a good mother. Who is he fooling? 

Will I get another chance? Mistakes should not be repeated. But how can I make a choice if there isn't one?

Give me one more chance. 

There are a lot of mistakes I would rather make than the ones I made.

I would gladly make the mistake of skipping gym, and wait at the school bus stop instead, with the other mothers in their pyjama suits, discussing how the school ordered a new annual day outfit every year and made us pay for it, as we see off our children in the morning.

I would merrily make the mistake of spending more time trying new breakfast options for his lunchbox, than choosing an easy cheese and tomato sandwich on most days.

Or make the mistake of leaving the office early, to greet him when he returns home, dirty and sweaty after football, and hug him and kiss his flushed face. 

And, lest I forget, I would rather make the mistake of not travelling the world for work, instead of being away from him for days on end.

Or the mistake of skipping an important conference, to be at the parent-teacher meeting. Could a meeting ever be more important than him? 

You see how the tiny holes in the fabric of myself have joined hands over the years and turned into an enormous hole. How conspiratorial! Picture me as Mother Earth; these little holes in the ground are now an excavation. Can someone fill it up?

I always tell him that I can never love anyone else, ever, because I am still in debt for not having loved him enough, at least in kind. In cash, I did. 

You shouldn’t borrow more until you settle your outstanding debt.

He has a solution: love my kids. Will you, Mum? Ah, grandchildren. Here is another weapon – replacement? 

It doesn't work that way, I say. It's as if you wanted a skirt, and they offered shorts. 

Gillian is very smart. 

I know you will have arguments for the mistakes I made, and against the ones I'd rather have made. But trust me. I say it from experience: it's difficult to live with a gaping hole.

In this debate, hypothetical as it may be, you for the mistakes I made and me against, who are we kidding? You are justifying your own mistakes, the ones that you’d rather not have made.

This is how my little holes, that make up my gaping hole, show themselves, every day.

My eyes tear up with want, to hold my boy’s hand, when I see mothers holding their babies’ hands in the MTR. 

I suppress my sniffles with a tissue, when I see a mother walking patiently beside her child as he examines his reflection in a shop mirror. It’s new to him. Let him experience it. What's the rush? she thinks. Let him, let me take this in. This may not happen again. Let him discover this world, a step at a time. Soon, he will have to hustle anyway. 

You say it's menopause. Ah, another weapon. So if I feel mushy, it's either periods or menopause? I have feelings, you know, the kind that bring tears. That's why our body has tear glands. 

I feel more, now. For when I was making those mistakes, the ones I shouldn't have, I had stopped feeling. I was steeling. The feelings have come back with a vengeance, like hypersensitive skin after an injury. Torn. 

I would rather make the mistake of giving him a toy or an ice cream that was not tied to a goal achieved, and teach him that he always had the right to be happy, not only when he achieved something. This would have been my favourite mistake. 

He would have blossomed in the shower of these mistakes like a flower in fresh rain. 

You ask: But did he? Blossom, in spite of everything ? 

Yes. He did blossom, as beautiful as a wild flower in the wilderness. For it is in its nature to subsist on the minimum, and bring beauty to the world of the kind that makes you smile. It's not my credit to take when something blossoms without the gardener. It is their own, or God’s, if you believe in one.

As I look at my wild flower, its grandeur unmatched, I think of ways to fill the gaping hole. 

There are none. 

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Shivani Sarwal writes romance and women’s fiction. She is a fan of investigative journalism and is fascinated by literary fiction. She is currently working on an auto-fiction while pursuing her part-time undergraduate diploma in creative writing at Oxford University.