My Mother’s Child

Amber B. Garma

For Mommy

I stare at a selfie of my mother and I. I don’t see it often, but I see it now. A trick not of the light, but of the decision to pull my hair back like she always asks me to. Of the lipstick she slipped into my bag.

It’s true that similarities glare at you. The sympathetic smile of an elementary school teacher. The eyelids that stack lazily atop of each other. She looks just like her mother. I look just like her.

On the phone, I listen to my first ever boss describe my first ever job. I think of my mother’s life, and realize that it will be mine.

Like my mother, I’ll poke my head into every city and town — the world my hall of classrooms. Like my mother, I’ll do it to listen to the struggles of people, to be a student of the world. And like my mother, I will fight for people, with what else but my teacher-smile worth thousands and millions.

Like my mother, I will speak in please. Please try. Please care. Please help. And I will hear back thank yous tenfold, from the people who have come to love me like a mother. In spite of it all, I can still be a mother.

I am my mother’s child, because I know my boyfriend needs a massage before he even asks for one. I am my mother’s child, because I speak to supermarket babies in her brand of parentese. I am my mother’s child: strangers have known it at first glance. My mother doesn’t own a pair of pants I wouldn’t try to ‘borrow’. She pays for the alterations.

From my mother, I inherit more than loose blouses and light eyebrows. I inherit gentle bedside kisses, tireless weekend visits. I inherit okays to every dream I have ever had, sorrys for being loved despite not always being understood. I inherit the example of motherhood, the certainty of vocation, the power of a smile. I am my mother’s child. I inherit her heart, wear it on borrowed sleeves.