When mom left.

I still remember when mom left. She left me, my Dad and everything they ever fought for. Her only child, she left without a damn backward glance. She felt no pain at all, she just cut me off. I didn’t hear from that woman in 6years. How she was living and probably if she was dead, I wouldn’t know. I’d find out through the extensive grapevine of my mother’s friends but I sure as hell wouldn’t find out in time to make the funeral.
I tell you what, you don’t know what it’s like to loss a mother.
At age 11 someone leaves, it doesn’t make much sense, does it? Divorce doesn’t make much sense. When you’re 11, all you care about is the social nexus of school. Your other greatest concerns are play stations and what happens on the playground after class.
I didn’t understand the word even when I knew it’s definition. What I understood was that, people stopped loving each other for reasons I of course did not know – I stopped loving my best friend and replaced her with David, and Dickson. I understood that, but I didn’t understand the concept of unconditional love.
I vehemently believe that most people by the age of 11 have not gone through enough to know that their parents love them unconditionally. I of course had not. I know some people will have cancer, leukemia and maybe other chronic diseases, their parents will spend sleepless nights in a hospital waiting room chair. Some people will experience things I never will, I know some parents will have made unimaginable sacrifice for their kids by the time they’ve celebrated their 11th birthday. Mine hadn’t. Even if they had, I’m not certain I could have known that this was a symbol of unconditional love that comes from creating a human being. Your parents will tell you, like mine did, “I’ll always love you” but it won’t always feel like that. Rather they’ll shout, they’ll scream that you let the hen out again, or that you dropped a cup of tea on the wool carpet. They’ll yell at you for what you did to your brother or your sister, their faces a cast of disappointment for getting a call from school for failing the 2nd grade spelling test.
What do you do when someone who is supposed to unconditionally love you, leaves? You do nothing. Your dad will tell you it’s nothing to do with you, it’s between daddy and mommy but you won’t believe him. You suppressed the memory, you don’t forget what happened but you don’t think about it either. Your father’s friends will not bring up that woman in conversation in front of you, though you’ll hear a snippet of gossip from behind closed doors.

You’ll see your parents in court, the court proceedings on your father’s desk and you’ll just take a cursory look at the legal jargon then put it right back where you found it, like a thief not daring to leave any fingerprints. You’ll wonder what’s going on in your mother’s life, you’ll wonder where she’s been all this while. she’s always traveling, she always used to bring back keyrings, trinkets and charms for you. A keyring from the Olympics, a stuffed bear with a Union Jack on its foot from England, a leather bracelet from South Africa. Postcards she never sent but promised to give you when she next came to see you because back then, there was always a next time bobbing in the horizon.
You’ll be constantly reassured it’s not your fault but you still wonder. Rationally, you know better but you wish there was something you could do. You’ll call and she’ll pick up but she’ll cut the conversation short. she won’t even sound like your mother, sometimes.
The painful part is, your father won’t make others think of her as evil. He tells you about how she’s doing well at work and that she’s a very ambitious woman. She’s a bit of a public figure, apparently. You’ll think that’s rather cool – isn’t it? – but you’ll still wonder if a truly good person would have left their husband and child like that.
A certain day you’ll lose your temper over something, like all children do. You’ll have a little tantrum and your grandparents call at the worst time while your father is trying to deal with you. He’ll tell them what happened to try to get them off the phone but you’ll hear your grandfather make a comment. You’ll hear only the tail end, but it’ll be enough. He says, “…just like his father” and that will hurt you more than it should. You’re genetically at least 50% identical to your mother, what did you expect? You’ll still hate the idea that you could be the offspring of a woman like that. A woman who did things like that, who just left for no genuine reason.
You’ll say to yourself, I’m fine, though, you think. You’ll go to school; you’ll have off days like everyone else. You’ll do well at school; your teachers will expect great things. You’ll consider studying medicine at college and your father will be concerned that the local universities aren’t good enough. He’ll discuss it with the careers counsellor who says that medicine in a top-notch college is expensive, he’ll show know worries because he Is capable of sponsoring you to any level.
You’ll be fine, you’ll cruise along at school until your mother reappears in your life. She’ll show up at school demanding to pick up her son at school. Your school principal will panic, your Dad has mentioned that something like this could happen. He comes to the locker room which is, quite frankly, filthy. He's worried about lawsuits.He’ll tell you that you can see your mother in his office or you can go home and he’ll handle it. You’ll thank him, let him know that you’re fine and you take the bus home with your best friend like you did most days. Your mother calls you, but your phone is out of battery. Your mother calls your best friend’s phone, she asks for you and her relief is palpable when she hears your voice.
He doesn’t realize that your mother’s reappearance is a terrible, terrible thing. He doesn’t realize her reappearance opens up a world of hurt that you were once too young to understand. He doesn’t realize that you probably would have made it all the way to the end of high school without much trouble but now that she’s here, things aren’t quite so peachy. That woman turned your world upside down once and you’ve coped just fine, possibly because you were too young and too ignorant, but now you’re older and you’re wiser and ignorance was bliss. You can’t plead ignorance anymore. Ignorance was a kind of bliss you’re no longer entitled to.
When she came back, she took you to dinner. Your phone is having one of its daily seizures and your mother offers to buy you a new phone. The iPhone has just launched and he offers to buy you the smartphone on everyone’s lips. You didn’t say no – you were 17 and you were rather curious about the phone that threatened to make all other phones look like Fredy Maxwell’s. You don’t realize that your mother buys your love just like she buys everything else.