I recorded a voice note to my mother on the J train last night. Nine minutes. I have never spoken that long into a phone without someone interrupting me, which honestly proves my point about my family.
It started because she'd sent me a photo. Just the balcony back in Ahmedabad, the marigolds she's growing, the plastic chairs, the clothesline. Nothing special. Everything.
So I started talking. The J train was crossing the Williamsburg Bridge and the whole city was glittering out the window and I was crying into my phone like an absolute disaster while a teenager three seats down definitely noticed.
The voice note I didn't send my mother had everything in it. That I miss the sound of the pressure cooker. That New York is thrilling and lonely in the exact same breath. That I'm proud of myself and I don't know who to tell. That sometimes I forget the Gujarati word for something and it scares me more than it should.
I told her about the fashion job, the parts I don't put on the phone calls. The days I feel like a fraud. The days I feel unstoppable. How both can be true before lunch.
And then the train pulled into Marcy Avenue, and I deleted the whole thing.
Not because it wasn't true. Because it was too true. My mother worries in a language of feeding me and asking if I'm sleeping. If I sent her nine minutes of my actual heart, she would fly here on the next flight, and honestly part of me wanted exactly that.
Instead I called her. "Hi Mummy. The marigolds look nice." She talked for forty minutes about the neighbor's wedding. I just listened. It was the same thing, said differently.
Some love travels better unspoken.
Love,