21/02/2021
*
I remember my mom waking me up. I mustn't have been asleep for more than an hour (she'd never do that), but it would always feel like the dead of night; fatigue heavy on jelly-like limbs, blinking slowly in the light that streamed in from the hallway upstairs, cold air slipping under the sheet as she lifted it. Gently; determined. Her arms around me. "Come," she'd whisper under my hair, which curled like a maniac back then. "There's a hedgehog in our backyard. Wanna see?"
I did; we went into the dark; we watched its tiny body move and shuffle, dark eyes, spikes wet and shiny in the torchlight; she tucked me back into my bed.
*
My mom once told me I see beauty in the little things. She'd written it down somewhere, on a piece of paper—oh yeah, it must've been a primary school thing. (I can see her handwriting now, long and round; rushed but weirdly clear—a teacher's hand?) Beauty in the little things. I suppose that sounds a little vague, maybe (probably) even clichéd, but I knew exactly what she meant.
I don't think she realized to what extent those words affected me. I was eight, and it had never struck me that this was a Thing. I liked it. I still like it. (I never told her.)
I think I take after my mom. I mean: I know I do, but specifically in this The Little Things element. But I don't believe hers—my grandma—has ever told her anything like that.
My mom and I have an interesting relationship. (I wonder, suddenly: who doesn't?) I'd need more than a couple hundred words to get into that. Haven't even figured out if I want to go there, if I want to, ever: if I want to attempt to untangle something as delicate and complicated as the shivering, naked branches of a mother-daughter relationship. God, no.
So I'll stick to that hedgehog.
