Mommy Backrub

Memories we’d made together, now we have a chance, to remake it again, translated…

At the beginning of this year, my mother had an accidental fall, after her surgery, her health declined quickly, not only did she became slow to move, her mind seemed to have been, impacted too, not as agile or quick-to-react as she once was. Before this, every time after the break as I’d returned to Yuli, the two of us would lie in bed, and talk endlessly, until my younger sister voiced her objections, that our conversations had, deeply, impacted the quality of sleep, then, we’d stopped talking.

My younger sister took her days off back in September, said that she was going to take mom to Taipei to visit while she’s still mobile, actually, I knew that my younger sister planned to take my mother to come and visit me, to ease my mother’s missing me, and secondly, my younger sister gets a chance, to visit with her former coworkers too.

I’d checked into the hotel with mom and my younger sister, the three of us had an amazing brunch, and we were enjoying the leisure afternoon, in the evening, before bedtime, my mother ran into the bathrooms suddenly, said she wanted to give me a backrub. Seeing how my mother’s dried hands, not moving swiftly enough, with the sponge, rubbing my back, I’d wanted to cry, because this made me remembered how when I was younger, I’d bathed with her—such a time of bliss that was, back then, I was really timid, didn’t dare staying alone in the bathrooms, I’d loved clinging on to mom as she bathed. We would help clean one another’s backs, it’d felt, blissful to me.like this???  Not my photograph…

And now, mom’s aged, I’m also past midlife too, since I grew up and gone to school away from home, have children and started working, those memories of bathing with mom were, already gone, but, she’d still remembered every minute of it.

So, this, is how the mother wanted to reconnect to her daughter like she was when she was younger, they’d bathed together when she was quite young, and now, as she became older, she had this one more chance, to reminisce, to live that same old memory all over again.