The empty street seemed brighter than it had a few hours earlier and my eyes began to adjust. Maybe it seemed that way because I had spent the last two hours watching a movie. Or the sun had just focused its light on the mix of smooth and cracked pavement on Shiloh Street. Masks had not yet adorned our faces, for it was a few weeks too early to know. We instead let the space between us do the work. So as my mother and I walked around the block and crossed the street to avoid the few people we encountered, our path became closer to a closed jagged zigzag than a smooth loop. That urchin-like shape became our little solace, our daily routine after routine took a sudden departure.
We stepped out onto the freshly paved sidewalks, crude hearts and unknown initials already permanently carved in. Three weeks into our indefinite staycation, monotony had already begun, so the conversation flipped back and forth between two seemingly distinct topics: the admissions office of Duke University and the film Tokyo Story. The distance between them was shorter than it seemed; there was an inherent tie between the institutional reminder of my impending leaving home and a film about the aftermath of that very exit. As I described to my mother the universal story of adult children neglecting their elderly parents, I began to notice a similar narrative taking shape as I awaited the college decision arriving that evening. Her ears attentive and eyes engaged, my mother asked me questions about my anticipation of the decision, or what I thought about the movie. I now know that she cared more about connecting with me than she did about hearing the plot of a movie from the 50s. But she has always been patient, so she nodded along and engaged with my incoherent raving.
In the idyllic blue above us and over all the surrounding lawns, uncertainty and viral particles hovered. Also hovering was the fact that whenever this dreadful period of surreal stasis ended, my movement away would unstoppably begin. But the subtle push of the breeze and the mellow heat of the sun muted these screaming voices. The repeated form of the large block and the pull of conversation were all that existed at that moment. Until we stepped into the door, our two voices successfully drowned out the noise we'd been unable to ignore.
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After the celebratory mood of the college decision wore off, what remained was a twofold fear of what my life would become once I lived on my own and what would happen if the present risk to our bodies kept my independence from existing in the near future. With each day, the fear compounded itself, the weeks began to blend together, and my mother's hair became increasingly gray. Her hair was a physical reminder of the time we had remaining. She began to dye it again once she could return to the salon, but what was beneath the new colors urged me to grasp onto whatever pieces of togetherness I could.
Tokyo Story is supposed to make you cry, to make you think of your mother. But its impact became stronger in conjunction with that warm conversation about nothing of note. My memory of the film is inexorably tied to the woman that kept me grounded despite the pandemic's constant terrors. When I watch Tokyo Story now, tears fall without a choice. I go back to that day when everything seemed okay for a moment, an abnormally bright spot among the forced mundanity.
Each time I talk to my mother, the number of conversations we have left decreases by one. The fear and acceptance of the impending last time grow as I find myself further from home and see my mother's physical features age. But I hope that the delicate tranquility of that spring day will resist the weathering effects of time; that it will remain close to me even when the years I've spent with my mother are crystallized only in memory.
We stepped out onto the freshly paved sidewalks, crude hearts and unknown initials already permanently carved in. Three weeks into our indefinite staycation, monotony had already begun, so the conversation flipped back and forth between two seemingly distinct topics: the admissions office of Duke University and the film Tokyo Story. The distance between them was shorter than it seemed; there was an inherent tie between the institutional reminder of my impending leaving home and a film about the aftermath of that very exit. As I described to my mother the universal story of adult children neglecting their elderly parents, I began to notice a similar narrative taking shape as I awaited the college decision arriving that evening. Her ears attentive and eyes engaged, my mother asked me questions about my anticipation of the decision, or what I thought about the movie. I now know that she cared more about connecting with me than she did about hearing the plot of a movie from the 50s. But she has always been patient, so she nodded along and engaged with my incoherent raving.
In the idyllic blue above us and over all the surrounding lawns, uncertainty and viral particles hovered. Also hovering was the fact that whenever this dreadful period of surreal stasis ended, my movement away would unstoppably begin. But the subtle push of the breeze and the mellow heat of the sun muted these screaming voices. The repeated form of the large block and the pull of conversation were all that existed at that moment. Until we stepped into the door, our two voices successfully drowned out the noise we'd been unable to ignore.
-----
After the celebratory mood of the college decision wore off, what remained was a twofold fear of what my life would become once I lived on my own and what would happen if the present risk to our bodies kept my independence from existing in the near future. With each day, the fear compounded itself, the weeks began to blend together, and my mother's hair became increasingly gray. Her hair was a physical reminder of the time we had remaining. She began to dye it again once she could return to the salon, but what was beneath the new colors urged me to grasp onto whatever pieces of togetherness I could.
Tokyo Story is supposed to make you cry, to make you think of your mother. But its impact became stronger in conjunction with that warm conversation about nothing of note. My memory of the film is inexorably tied to the woman that kept me grounded despite the pandemic's constant terrors. When I watch Tokyo Story now, tears fall without a choice. I go back to that day when everything seemed okay for a moment, an abnormally bright spot among the forced mundanity.
Each time I talk to my mother, the number of conversations we have left decreases by one. The fear and acceptance of the impending last time grow as I find myself further from home and see my mother's physical features age. But I hope that the delicate tranquility of that spring day will resist the weathering effects of time; that it will remain close to me even when the years I've spent with my mother are crystallized only in memory.