Find Me in the Dark

My mother used to tell my sister and me that if she were dropped into a completely dark room with the two of us, she would know exactly where we were.

By our scent.

We thought this was hysterical.

“You’re such a savage,” we would tell her.

Because what kind of person says that?

What did she mean, she could smell us?

It sounded primitive. Almost animal.

My mother never cared how ridiculous we thought it was. She was completely serious.

She knew the smell of her children.

She said she could find us without seeing us.

I understand her now.

It only took me more than fifty years and children of my own.

My mother and I are not best friends.

I think that matters.

We do not tell each other everything. We disagree. We irritate each other. There are parts of her I have spent half my life trying to understand.

But she knows me.

There is a difference.

I can be miles away from her and answer the phone with a perfectly ordinary hello.

“What’s wrong?”

Nothing.

“What happened?”

Nothing happened.

She knows anyway.

Sometimes she calls before I have decided I need her.

It makes me wonder if we ever completely leave our mothers.

We talk about birth as though the cord is cut and that is the end of it. One body becomes two. The child leaves.

But maybe we take something with us.

Maybe I took the safety net.

Some invisible piece of the first place I ever existed.

And then I had children.

My youngest left home, and I have not washed his blanket.

I know I should.

But it still smells like him.

Sometimes I put my face against it and breathe.

And there he is.

Not really.

But enough.

The first time I realized what I was doing, I thought of my mother.

Of course.

Not their cologne.

Not their soap.

Them.

I know the scent of my children.

Something beneath all of that.

Something I would know anywhere.

Something primal.

My mother was right.

She could find us in the dark.

I know because I could find mine too.

Somewhere in this world, there has always been one person who knew me before I knew myself.

A person who could hear sadness inside a hello.

A person who knew when I was lying about being fine.

A person who could find me without seeing me.

And one day, she will not be here.

I can barely stand that sentence.

There are people whose existence becomes part of the architecture of your life. You do not wake every morning grateful that the ceiling is still there.

You simply trust that it is.

I have always trusted that she is.

Maybe that is what frightens me most.

Not only losing my mother.

But living in a world where no one remembers me from before I remember myself.

Where, for the first time,

I could stand in the dark

and she would not come looking.

So I leave my son’s blanket unwashed.

I understand now.

I am memorizing him too.