I am always in her kitchen.
Not only there: I follow her from room to room, or she carries me; I have never been sure which. I have learned the house by the way she moves through it. Which drawer she opens without looking. Which window she stands at when she is trying to decide something. I know her habits better than she does, because I have nothing else to do but watch.
My hands are different from hers. I have always known this, the way you know something without being able to explain where the knowing came from. Her hands have done what they have done. Mine carry a different weight: the specific pressure of everything they were never asked to hold.
I do not grieve this.
I am becoming more present as she ages. I do not know why this is the law, but I feel it: more solid each year, more detailed. When she was twenty I was barely a shape at the corner of her eye. Now I have crow's feet. Now I sit across from her at the table and she can almost look at me directly.
This morning she did.
She looked at my hands, and I looked at hers, and there was a moment where the distance between what is and what could have been became very small. Then the light changed and I was alone in the kitchen again.
I am always in her kitchen.
I wonder what she thinks I am mourning.