Poetry – There you are (for Mother’s Day)

I remember when I found you, just before you caught the train that day many months in coming.

Of course you’d always been there, doing what you were meant to. Bandaging, teaching, cajoling, exasperating, bringing me up in a world I tried to hide from.
But before that moment there was an arms-length between us. You didn’t understand this moody madam, I couldn’t catch the way you flew and neither of us knew how to compromise.

The phone call, I remember, and the t-towel on Dad’s shoulder as he tried to explain the roadblock in Grandma’s brain. I couldn’t comprehend and you still finished my costume for school, so I thought everything would be okay.
But there was no reprieve and we got one final Christmas, then it ended when the air was still heavy with snow and ice. We traveled to the station, so you could carry our goodbyes back to her. A mother’s worry made you take me into the waiting room and stand in front of the old green heater. You stood next to me and we warmed our hands. I looked at you and thought,

Oh, there you are.

Related reads
Postcard