Have you, as a child been to a fair or a movie with your friend and her parents? I remember wanting cotton candy but not being able to ask for it because they are not your parents to be asking things off of. Worse still if they notice you looking and offer. The humiliation you then carry in your tiny hands to the bed.
The fun and the safety they provide are borrowed. When I was in fifth grade, I had to go to my neighbor, an aunty with a child my age to get my hair plaited. Borrowed mother. When she got new clothes for my friend; I remember the next batch of clothes I selected resembled hers exactly. But not exactly, they looked like cheaper versions of them. You cannot mimic someone’s experience in buying clothes, I learned.
Situations might have changed, conditions bettered. I am a saner person, but I carry that sense of loss like I carry my heart. So unaware of its existence till it pounds for attention, comes all the way up my throat, and threatens to burst. I sit in the homely feeling that a parent’s coming gives to a home. The hall was suddenly occupied. Hums in the kitchen; breakfast. Salad with food. And all that ‘be here now’ fades when the heart aches like it is 10 again like a mother is missing, as she may never come back. Like you must run from this borrowed homely feeling, it’s not yours to feel. Don’t risk the humiliation. And I check my phone, maybe my sister is texting, or that best friend, the guy you thought family is calling. And nothing. Something, but not it. Not what fixes the loss of a 10-year-old that was carried around for 20 years too long.
I still sit, looking at a mother defend a daughter against a joke, touch her cheek, know her favorite author. She called me beta. Borrowed warmth. But I was taught not to borrow and I mustn’t. I should go to what is mine, the anxiety, the loss, the pot, on the floor mid-air or not.