Chapter 115 - 116. The Dinner [2]
Chapter 115 – 116. The Dinner [2]
Its surface, which was usually so calm, was rippling due to the drizzling rain. As the rainwater fell down, the particles of ice fell down too. This caused the temperature to drop to a lower point. The season would switch, the red leaves fallen on the ground would soon be buried by the white of the snow.
Back then, when I was very young, I had never imagined I would have seen snow. But when I was twenty years old, there was often ice rain and even snow in this place. The ground that used to be dry and sandy grew green in some places.
"Zie?," I called Zie. He turned his head toward me at once. "I want this place to change into a better one." We were walking toward the river under an umbrella to see the ripples of the water under the falling rain, enjoying the few hours meeting.
"Why is that? How would you like to change it?" hearing him say so, I wished I could say that I would have wanted it 'normal' enough that I could play with him before that shooting took place
"Uff…leave it!" I wanted to laugh at my own foolishness and childish mind.
"Tha, I have to go," He said so suddenly, "We meet here again two days after today." I nodded, and he walked away with his stiff movement, leaving me alone who kept watching his back until it was gone from my sight.
At some point, I started to understand my mother's way of thinking which I mostly misunderstood at that time. Once, I would say that she was stupid, though I still thought she was. I used to ask her questions: why did she not leave Dad? Why didn't she find a new father for us? Why did she hold on with someone who kept hurting her feelings? Why did she just give up giving him to another person? I just realized it when Zie walked away from me. It was a disease.
I was just like my mother. We were two people with the same destiny. If there were another me with the same mind, she might have been saying to me: 'Why keep holding on to someone who is impossible to be with you? Why don't you leave him? Why do you keep holding on to someone you can't be with? Why do you insist that hard? Now I knew, it was a very simple thing.
I had to go home now and get myself ready. It took about forty-five minutes to be at the restaurant where we would meet. I wanted to come early because I knew my mom very well. Being met as two defeated persons, I felt better. Destiny finally had its own way to unite two people who had been split for a long time.
"This is really funny." I laughed at my own fate and mother. I was walking in the rain. "How can this be funny?" I raved between my laughs.
…
When I arrived home, Mirai and Winnter were having a meal. They looked at me in curiosity. "What?" I asked them.
Mirai, with her mouth full of food, shook her head. And Winnter said, "Is there a good thing that happened?" This girl was awesome, she knew my habits well, too.
"Yes, kind of. I'm going out after this. I put my shoes on the shelf. "My mother is asking me for a date," I whispered to Winnter. Instantly her expression was perplexed. I never told her that I hardly had a good relationship with my parents, but I believed that she had known that when my mom came here at that time. "I'm going to a restaurant near the performance show after this." Then I hurriedly went to the bathroom.
…
I arrived at the restaurant at six. My mother asked me to wait because she would come late. I saw people gathering at a park to enjoy a marionette performance.
On certain days, marionette street shows were conducted. That memory suddenly struck me when I shared bread and milk with Zie at midnight. Even though it happened when I was between life and death, it felt very real. Sometimes I wished those days would come back again.
"Traffic jams everywhere." Her voice shocked me. She didn't change much since the last time I met her. "Have you ordered something?" I shook my head to reply to her. I was relieved to see her alright.
My mother called a waiter and she ordered so much food. The restaurant was a common food restaurant I often met everywhere. The menus were not so varied. And the consumers tended to take the food away due to not having much time left or they were hurried back to work to catch up with the work schedules
But my mother knew that restaurant was memorable for me. She used to take me here to eat together. Although within a month or a year we only met twice or three times, those meetings were very meaningful.
"How's your work?" I was about to devour my French fries.
"It is fine, Mom. I enjoy working there now, but next year I plan to continue my studies." I would take my postgraduate studies in the same university where I studied. And that meant I had to go back to the city. "I will stay here but only on the weekends."
"Good," Mom replied. "pursue your dreams. I will always support you," Even until I got my own money from my job, my mother still sent me an allowance to me and to my brother as well, although he had his own family. Despite her very busy activities and our rarity to meet up, I just realized that it was her way to show her affection towards us, because I was she could give to us.
For the majority of the people, talking and eating together with their mother was something very ordinary, but for us, it was once in a blue moon moment. We didn't touch anything about father, mostly we talked about my brother, how got on with his life because for the last few days he was kind of quite hard to be contacted. Mom was quite closer to my brother than to me.
"Brother asked me to come to my father's wedding, but I have thrown away the card." Mother just smiled listening to my words. I knew it was her who sent the card but she had no intention to push us to come to that wedding.
"Your brother will come with his wife." Mom told me.
"I am sorry but I am not that strong to show up in that place," I got a problem in forgiving the man who almost killed me. "I don't want to give anything to him. I hope it will be the last," I didn't want to tell her that it was him who had killed Zie. "I have already considered him nobody for me. I guess my patience has run out for that man."
After eating, we went to the marionette show. The bustling atmosphere seemed to swallow all our disappointed feelings. We were like two people who had been let down by our expectations. I never thought that this funny fate would unite us.
I was happy to see my mother was still able to laugh at the funny stories brought today. I saw her so strong like a coral and would not be shaken by the waves striking her immensely. I was so much relieved that all these lessons we had been through taught me to understand my mother and it repaired our relationship.
We went to the ceramic shop not far from the place where her car was parked. We chose three cups of an animal motif. We knew it was my brother's favourite so mom would send one for him.
"That boy doesn't change a bit even after he has a child." Mom knew his hobby of collecting ceramics of animal shapes, and of course, she would add his collection later on.
We separated outside the shop because my mother had to go home before eight at night. The night hours were very strict here due to some murder cases and my mother didn't want to get stuck in the traffic jams.
"Be careful on the way home," She said before she got into the car. I watched her until she disappeared from my sight.
I walked along the park. Erick said that he would meet me in front of the performance building and take me home, so I waited for him at the bench near that building. I saw people who were still in the park that started getting quiet. I didn't talk with them but at least I was not alone in this place.
I realized that the problems I was facing in the last few months had changed me. There were things that made me change.. All that had happened to me gradually pulled me and made me realize to see from different angles and solve it on, my trauma, my relationship with my mom, and my acceptance of myself.