"I feel like a straw person", she said to me in passing. I knew what she meant but replied that it's probably due to the recent surgery, and that it's probably not good for her to walk up and down the stairs like that too much yet. She was typically morbid but this was something more, for it was simply a statement of fact, thrown out for anyone to hear. A caller came to ask her to go to a christening dinner, and part of me wanted her to go, because I think it would be good for her to be among friends her own age, but her children had come home to see her so she declined. Ever since dad passed she seemed to be soul-less, existing among the living, smiling, laughing, paying bills, but always at a distance, as if an invisible snow globe had descended on her and placed her life on display. We see but cannot touch.

I sat and looked at old pictures, of me when I was a boy, of her when she had just emigrated, when there was still a trace left of a womanly charm. Look at that, she said, Look at me, my did I look young. I said nothing. For most of my life I had wondered how it is that she came to be who she is, why she had stuck by a man who obviously did not think too much of her. I never asked her that question, and I never will, of course. The fights were terrible and the words were biting. But over time I guess she had become calloused to them and had developed a certain sense of self confidence that even he cannot shake. She even gave some back once in a while. Dad mellowed out after the children have left, and this is the part of their lives together that I didn't get to see.

What kind of love can endure in that tempest? Was it love that endured, or was it the necessity of feeding her children that chained her to this fate? Did love then come slowly, gradually, and seeped through the pores of her skin to only flower after all the children had left, or was it the reverse, that love was always there but was defaced and injured by the slings and arrows of necessity and circumstance so that it became almost unrecognizable? I don't know. I only know that at his funeral I was a bit surprised to see and hear how she cried for him, almost as if she was one of those professional criers that the Vietnamese used for funerals in the days of yore.

And now she walks around in her own space. I see but cannot touch.

I wanted to write this down before the twin curtains of time and Monday manic envelop my mind in forgetfulness.