That Day I Couldn't Slip Into View

On a sunny day, I feel that just by looking through the filter of a car window, the passing daily life turns into a lovely slow motion.

The grains of light flowing outside the window, the adorable wiggling bottom of a puppy swaying defenselessly, and the sweat running down someone's earnest skin. The sparkle in those fleeting moments all remain in my heart equally.

The scenery from a car is surprisingly wide open, and everything I see shows me a vivid moment at just the right timing, as if by arrangement, so I believed that I could see every single event around me, just as if I were looking down from the sky.

That is probably why my heart was restless.
Why didn't you notice me?

The moment I spotted my mother's car beyond the traffic light, I shouted with my whole body and ran recklessly along the school route. I wanted to be reflected in even the corner of the rearview mirror, so I sent signals desperately, dashing like a relay runner.

However, the car heartlessly picked up speed and drove away. Remembering that an adult I knew had noticed me in the same spot before, my chest tightened even more.

I still vividly remember returning home, clutching my feelings with nowhere to go, wondering why I couldn't slip into her field of vision even though I was so close.

Even after I got home, I couldn't voice the loneliness of not being able to catch up, because my mother's overflowing smile, which would make me innocently ask, 'Hey, why are you always smiling?', was tightly closed that day.

Even in the days when we slept like sardines in a small room, the gaze directed at me was always calm and gentle. That is why I instinctively swallowed my words when I saw her tense profile. I think that decision was surely the right one.

Back then, I was grieving as if I had been abandoned by the world, feeling the despair of being left behind on my own. But my mother probably had no choice but to keep her eyes fixed ahead and grip the steering wheel, desperately holding back something that was surging upon her.

That day, I couldn't bring myself to say, 'I wanted to go home with you.' Even if I tried asking about that time now, she would probably just smile in a troubled way and evade the question, or it would be such a distant memory that she wouldn't remember it at all.

That day, while fighting some kind of pressure, she was driving the car, desperately heading toward a place called tomorrow.

I want to quietly tell my younger self that it was okay.

I participated in this as well!