I am here, I am here.

If I were to connect the path I have walked
with dots on a blank map,
I sometimes daydream about
what kind of line it would draw.

Even while drawing a chaotic line, perhaps it was my mother
who remained there, unchanging.

Since I never married either.
How long has it been since I started living with my divorced mother?

Like 'Purple Noon,' for me,
it is dazzlingly full.

In the past, we fought, I cursed, and I gave her the silent treatment.
We would engage in a war of silence, holding it in until the point where I thought I would fall ill,
keeping the surface tension at its limit,
both of us stubbornly refusing to give in.

Now, as if she has forgotten those days,
my mother lives her days peacefully in bed.

Her memories sometimes get lost.

But those new memories, which I have never seen or touched,
are fresh to me.

My life is not the one I am accustomed to now.

Because it feels as if there was a different timeline,
I am enjoying and accepting it.

Even though she can no longer walk, she tries to stand up.
She has started to laugh often.
I am grateful that she has even left behind feelings of pessimism somewhere.

Without fail, when evening comes, she talks about the time when I was small.

My younger brother is four years younger than me, though.

Even though we are completely separated now.

It seems that when my brother was young, he would come to the road barefoot, crying, looking for me.

As if it is happening right now, she tells me with a slightly
troubled expression, as if to say, 'I was so worried.'

So that was it.
I feel like I am meeting not the current brother, but a brother I am meeting for the first time.

Recently, there is an episode from when I was small that she tells like a signature story.

It seems that after Ken-chan and Yuki-chan, who had come over to play,
would go home, I would start playing by myself,
but...

Perhaps it is because I feel lonely when my mother gets busy preparing dinner for a while.

Even though no one called, leaning against the back of the sofa.

Looking lonely.

Bon-chan is here
Bon-chan is here

she says, calling her own name.

It seems to mean
don't forget that I am here.

I thought as I listened to my mother's voice.

I thought she was a child with shallow, or perhaps low,
weak self-assertion.

The sight of her saying Bon-chan is here
felt fresh, as if it wasn't even me.

It felt like I had another face too,
and it was a little interesting.

Perhaps when dusk falls and the sunset streams into the house,
children are suddenly struck by a sense of restlessness,
or perhaps that is just how it is.

I was happy that my mother remembered that.

It made me feel like I might have been loved,
as if I were flipping through an album.

I know full well that this time isn't here
to confirm my mother's love.

But now that my mother is in a wheelchair,
since she cannot walk, she scoops up memories she can hold
within herself and shows them to me.

They might be memories that could be scooped
in the hollow of a palm.

But the words she delivers to me,
every time I hear them repeated, offer me the time
when I was a happy child.

Caregiving isn't about being tested,
it's just 'life,' a dear friend once told me.

I am truly realizing that now.

Caregiving is 'life,' it is 'living.'

I hope we can continue to live peacefully,
laughing together in this chaotic way.