Warmth

“Are you sure about this?” My husband said to me.

“Positive.” I replied with a bit of conviction.

“Then do it. I’ll be right here by your side.”

“Thank you.” I said with a nod.

In front of us was a bright red door. I’ve never seen it in ages. Red was always my favorite color. That’s why my parents chose that color. That’s why my mother chose it. I wonder if that was the reason the house was also red. Maybe she came to like it as well.

My mother always did think of me first. She would always spoil me since I was little. She spoiled me, and spoiled me, almost to a fault. I could remember my first memory of her; a sweet, loving smile, a warm touch, and a comforting fragrance. I suppose that was from when I was a toddler.

My father was a rather rough man. He was stern but also caring. At least, when I was a child. I remember loving that time. I was their only daughter, so I was fairly spoiled. They’d play with me everyday, spoil me with treats, and shower me with love.

That all changed when I was in elementary school. One day, I heard my dad and my mom arguing in another room. For a child, hearing the parents you so dearly cherished screaming at each other was quite disheartening. I dare not say I was traumatized, but I was a bit shaken.

A few weeks later, as you might expect, my dear father was standing in front of the door-suitcase in hand. He crouched down and petted me on the head as I heard my mother sobbing in the background. I would not see him again for several years.

For a while, my mother kept doing the same things she would do before. She still spoiled me, still loved me, and still took care of me. That didn’t last long. After a while, she began to tell me that she couldn’t buy me many more toys. She started to work, and so she left me with caretakers, babysitters and sometimes, alone in the house.

At the time, I hated it. I hated how I didn’t have a dad anymore. I hated how I didn’t get popular toys anymore. I hated how she was never home. I started to resent her.

That resentment only grew as we both moved a few times. Every time, it was because of work, because apparently she had to find a new job. A teenager at the time, an angsty one at that, I always thought she just wasn’t cut out to be a worker if she was really fired that often. The adults seemed to dislike her too, as the kids at my schools would eventually start to spread rumors of her-ranging from the docile to the blatantly offensive such as her being a drag queen. Of course, I didn’t think much of these rumors, but it did make bullies target me, and that made me resent her further.

Then there were the men. My mother had a few men come over at times. Not enough to justify the claims of the bullies who mocked her and me by extension, but they did all leave her. Each time they did, she would smile and look at me, as if I was some sort of consolation. I still loved her, deep inside, but at the time, I could only think of her as being incompetent.

I was curious to why she failed so much. At home, in front of me, she would always smile and try her best to spoil me, but she would always fail. I started to think she was lying to me, that she had hidden something-something bad.

Nostalgia being a strong force as it is, I was tempted to try and look for my long lost father. I was in high school at that time, so I did have some resources. After a while, I managed to contact him, and meet him.

The now older looking man seemed in solid shape for the time, though he still seemed rough. He asked me if my mother had told me. I asked “Told me what?” And he shook his head.

“You’re adopted.” He said.

I slumped down in my seat. I had such suspicion before, but it still struck me hard. He told me that he and mother adopted me as a baby because they couldn’t have one of their own. I asked him if that was the reason he left her, and he said “partly.”

He pulled out a picture and showed it to me. I asked who it was, and he answered “Your mother. 20 years ago.”

My eyes widened. I knew at that moment why she always failed as a mother. My father began to try to justify his leaving her, but I didn’t listen-I was already convinced.

From that day on, I never once called my mother “mother” or “mom” ever again. At first she was baffled, but I told her that I knew her secrets. I told her that I knew I was adopted, and I knew of who she was in the past, throwing the picture my father gave me towards her. That day was the first time I made her cry, as I said “You’re not my mother, you could never be a mother in the first place.”

I graduated high school shortly after. My mother apologized every day, and kept working hard to make me smile at her again, but to no avail. At that time, I was already hateful of her. On the day after graduation, I ran away from home.

I looked at Roland, my husband. He saw the worry in my eye and smiled. He put his hand on my shoulder and said “It’s fine.”

Indeed, it was only after I ran away-after I struggled living on my own, and after I became a mother that I realized how wrong I was. Far from failing at being a mother, it was I who failed as a daughter. The more I grew and the more I matured, the more I realized that. After being a mother myself, I understood it more, and it tore apart my heart every day. Every night I could only think of the effort she took to work and look after me alone. How she endured the abuse from the community and work because of who she was. I only realized then that that was the reason we moved so much, and why my father left her. She didn’t just quit because she was abused or she was fired, she quit and moved because I was bullied because of her. Only then too did I finally recall the men that she brought with her from time to time, how they always complained that she only cared about me, and how some of them seemed to be “bored with her gimmick”.

Only then could I imagine the heartbreak she must have felt when I said those hurtful words, and the shattering blow she must have endured when I, the only one she had left, left her too. Only then, did I realize, I had no right to hate her, but she had every right to hate me.

It didn’t matter who she was, or if I was adopted, to her, I was her one and only daughter, and I realized that she was always my loving mother.

And so, after mustering much courage, there I was, in front of the red door of the old house we used to live in-all three of us together. I tracked her down here, and every second my heart sank. Roland was beside me, giving me all the strength in the world, but I knew she would hate me. As I rang the bell, I braced for her frown. For her rage. She had every right, after all.

A moment later, a frail, yet warm looking woman, slightly worn but not battered, answered the door. Her eyes shimmered as she laid her eyes on me, and she smiled. That warm, brimming, shining smile. The same one from my earliest memory. The same smile she had even when father left her, even when I lashed at her; the smile she always gave me every day, every morning. Every time I came home.

Tears streaming from my face, before she could say anything, I smiled back at her and said “I’m home.”

Her smile widened as she replied; “Welcome home.”