The girl hasn’t been to her mother’s for a long time. No time. She has three children, the youngest is only four years old.
She is a pedant and a very serious lady. She is also in charge at home: she decides what the children should do, what furniture to buy, and so on. Her husband, a designer, doesn’t mind, they just discuss budgets and expenses together.
She also has her own business, a textile supplier, and she is the general director and co-owner of the company. And besides, she’s only thirty-six, she likes to go for massages, shopping, and manicures. Or just “hang out with the girls in the hammam.
(I met her and her family on a trip to Europe four years ago.)
She got into economics and stayed in the capital.
Her mother has been alone for a long time; her father died ten years ago. Her mother usually comes to visit her grandchildren, but after three days she hurries back. So the girl decided it was time to visit her mother herself, she called and missed her.
Her husband replied, “Go, of course! Oh, for a week at once? Okay, we’ll manage somehow…”.
The girl arrived in her small town, where she hadn’t been in eight years.
Her mother opened the door, “Finally! My God, how thin you are! Come into the kitchen at once.”
On the table were herring pies, boiled potatoes, and a bottle of her mother’s currant tincture.
“Good!” – Mom said. – Come on, put it on, you’re hungry.”
“Mammy, listen, I don’t eat all that stuff, it’s full of cholesterol and gluten…”
“No tricks! – Mom commanded. – Eat it!”
And suddenly the girl obediently took the pie. God, how delicious it was, she loved the pies her mother made so much. And the pies, and the herring under the fur coat. And currant tincture – currants that the little girl would pick from the bushes at the dacha, where there was a tiny house, a toilet in the yard and a noisy neighbor behind the fence who brought her carrots from her garden: “Crunch, strengthen your teeth!”
She suddenly felt like that girl, with freckles and frequent colds, with chronic otitis media, which her mother treated with alcohol compresses.
The girl took another drink and muttered: “That’s it, Mammy. You talk and I’ll listen.”
“That’s right! – Mom smiled.
And for a whole week the girl listened to her mother. She watched silly shows on TV, went with her to visit relatives, went to bed at ten o’clock, even though she usually didn’t get home until one o’clock in the morning. She did the dishes, which she wasn’t used to at home; they had a car and a housekeeper. And she liked washing dishes terribly; she remembered that childhood feeling: here was a big plate, very dirty, and now she, like a magician, was turning it into a shiny one.
She felt like a mother’s daughter, obedient and sweet.
“It wasn’t easy at first,” she told me later. – I got used to bossing myself around a long time ago. And suddenly I liked it wildly. Mom is in charge, Mom is big, and I’m small, I hardly know how to do anything, I do not decide anything.
And the girl ate and ate and ate and ate, forgetting the hell out of those dog diets.
“God so much, it’s awful,” she grinned. – “But I ate it all. Because getting small is a big deal for the most business-minded and family-minded woman. And all of a sudden – bam! – and childhood. I don’t know what my psychologist would call it, but I just call it happiness.
… She came home, the children rushed to her. The girl was even a little confused at first: yesterday her mother had braided her plaits.
But she quickly recovered, laughed: “My dears, how good you are, you’re so happy, you just don’t understand it.
