Trailed with clouds
The layered memories
Of time forever gone
Stands between us now
This spring dawn

“Sometimes it’s best to not talk…to keep away from people…my words, twisted and turned…misunderstood.”
My mother came to visit this morning as I read the news often filled with subjective narrative built upon passing responses to thrown at you questions.
She shared with me the anxiety hidden behind exchanges with others…within her words. Words often misunderstood…mis-translated. Words I, as a resistant teenager, often dismissed as ill-informed or un-founded.
It was mid-morning when told me that in a few days she would begin work at the hospital as a dietitian. A week ago an unknown woman came to her home – unannounced – to interview her for the position. During the interview, a written question, “Can you cook?”
“I invited her into the kitchen and showed her my stove…’of course I can cook! I raised a family!’ Did she think because I am deaf I cannot cook!”
Her history of negation, marginalization, inequality, and misunderstood awakened by the question. My anger was triggered by the fact that a job interview took place within her home … an unannounced visit. The invasion of her home…the broken boundary between work and family.
Today within this journey of remembrance is a new seed of understanding..it was my perspective of human rights, of equality, of what is right and what is wrong which blocked me from the golden moment of opening myself to her truth…to the her of who she was behind her deafness.