Parent-Child.

“Oh Gawd, I feel so sick,” I mutter. This was Thursday night, the day after the doctor look and jook…x-ray, blood test…and declare all results normal, just a bad flu virus you caught, he say.

“Sick?” my mother sound worried, frightened, gentle.

“Ooeer.” Skin like ice, sweat like waterfall, kitchen turning dark, light switching off inside me head too.

I sit on the old kitchen chair, my mother hug me against she tummy. I want to curl up and be a baby again. Never wanted this in years of forever. My mother sometimes joke about how, one day, when me and cousin Nan was four and three years old, she try to hug the two of we but we push she away, we want to be independent. Now look at me, I want to be a baby again.

To avoid fainting, place head between knees, I remember. That ain’t help. Dry sobs, I can’t stop them, “I feel so sick, I feel so sick.” My mother rub me back. She is warm, full of healing, but I still want to faint. I must lie on the cold floor, put me feet up, I remember this too, if you feel faint, lie flat, elevate your feet.

I raise feet, rest them on side of kitchen table. I look utterly foolish. “I look foolish,” I say.

“Aw, to heck with that,” my mother say. She put a plate of biscuits and guava jam on me tummy. I lie and crunch. The faint begin to fade.

“Come drink this hot Ovaltine.”

“Nahhh. I want to stay here for the rest of me life.”

“Awright,” she say. “Stay there for the rest of your life while I go to the bathroom.”

“Okay.”

She step over me, past me, gone. I wait on the floor for the rest of me life until she return from the bathroom. Sip Ovaltine, clean teeth, bed. She hang me mosquito net.

“Thank you, thank you.”

“Tch. For what?” she ask.

“Everything.”

“Awww, stchusp.”

I close me eyes, remember something my mother did say...it ain’t matter how old she get, how old she children get, they gon always be she children. When she first tell me that I was a teen and it make me vex.

Now I wonder if I would be that way if I had children and they grow up. Sometimes, I try to be the parent with she and she protest. Big arguments!

Everyday, in between “You better watch your mouth with me, I’m your mother,” and “You never listen to me, I’m just a girl, a daughter, ha, double ha,” and “Mummy, you’re driving too fast, be patient,” and “Aww, Gigi, you are such a Nag,” (we argue in perfect English)…everyday, in between silly mother-daughter struggles, we insist on taking care of one another…sometimes we appreciate, sometimes resent because it feel so over-protective; other times, we take it for granted.

I close me eyes, thoughts rush in. Look at me, Big Fool, needing my mother like this. I wonder if this does happen to other people, if they need they mother, if men does feel like this, or they got they wives to comfort them?

Cool air wash in through the open window, through the net. Everything feel so simple, clean right now. Thank you, thank you. I curl up like a baby and sleep.