Her Face
What does the face look like? The one you have stared at in all it's complexities, imperfections and moods the entire span of your life.
This is my mother.
I never knew that I knew her so well until she was gone.
Until I wept over her pictures and remebered the texture of her hair, what it was like to hug her and kiss her warm cheeks.
Looking at her pictures I can see right into her mind-what she was thinking. Whether or not she would've thought she looked fat, if she was tense and trying to hide it, or if she was just tired.
I see the wrinkles in her face and remember how she smiled, how she laughed big and loud.
I see her eyes and I remember all the ways they spoke. When she was tired from working so hard. When they danced in mischief. When she let loose with the grandbabies and became a little girl again, laughing at nonsense. Her dark, evasive eyes when I hurt her.
Whenever I see my mother's face in my mind I see her hands too. My mother was a woman of doing. My mothers life was action, work, toil, labor. She gave her all. I see her hands washing out plastic bags to reuse them. Her hands that chopped and cooked skillfully. Her hands, fingernails dirty, fighting the hard earth to make way for life to spring up in her garden. Her hands that rubbed my back so many nights when I was small and her deep and gentle voice that accompanied them.
It is so strange that the face I have seen and know, the one that I have run to my entire existence, is gone.
It's gone. She is gone. I will never be able to look at her face and see all the little imperfections that made her beautiful or the bright life in her eyes.
Never hear her deep, gentle voice singing, never be able to ask her another question, never be able to touch her warm cheeks.
It just makes me think of you and the face you can run to, the face that you can look at, the face that still exists for you, the face that houses eyes of life, ones that can open and close and speak to you. I feel partly envious.
Or maybe you have lost your mother's face too. Perhaps you never had one and are envious of me having at least had a mother.
Or maybe you are that face to someone small. Someone who gazes at you and sees all your imperfections and moods. Someone small who will remember the seemingly insignificant things that you're hands do every day. The small things that really make your life. If you touch them gently, look at them with belief and hope, speak to them with love and kindness. Maybe your face will change the world to someone because you are a good mother, with soft, warm cheeks and firm loving hands.
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