Pieces of My Mother by Melissa Cistaro

would discover lost treasures and ancient artifacts. I was also certain that someday I’d ride on the Olympic equestrian team and have my own stable of horses. But it never occurred to me that I would follow in my mom’s footsteps and become a mother.
    That familiar fear starts rattling around inside me again: what if a leaving tendency lies dormant inside me? Nobody believes me when I say this, but they don’t know how quickly lives can get derailed, how maybe my mom didn’t want to leave, or intended to leave only for a little while that became forever.
    Then another thought shakes me: my brothers and I share a common history of longing for our mother, and I can’t help but wonder if all three of us may have made the same monumental mistake. Perhaps, in our silence after her departure, we gave her permission to leave. Maybe we unintentionally handed our mom three free tickets to travel the world with little or no guilt about the family she’d left behind. Maybe we handed her the orange Monopoly card that said “Get out of jail free anytime.”
    Perhaps she was just testing the bounds of our love when she left, and we failed her. We waited for her to change her mind, but we didn’t fight for her or plead for her to come back. And even when she visited occasionally, we still never begged her to come back and stay for good. We were so awed to see her again in person that we never thought to ask for more, to try to win her back.
    Maybe she needed someone to fight for her. Maybe she needed my dad to hold onto her and tell her she was good inside and out when she had thoughts of leaving us. And when she walked out the front door, maybe she needed us to grab onto her waist or wrap ourselves around her and beg her not to go. Maybe she was planning to come back but no one asked her.
    So what did we do instead? Jamie, Eden, and I sat and waited on our porch steps on hot summer evenings while mosquitoes buzzed and bit our ankles and elbows. We went to the Marin County Fair, sunk our teeth into caramel apples, rode the Ferris wheel high up in the sky, and wished she was there with us. I hid under my yellow and green quilt with Bun-Bun at night and waited. I sat on the hay bales stacked high in the barn and wondered when we would see her next. I lay down alongside my hamster Fuzzy’s grave on our hillside with handfuls of yellow buttercups, and waited.
    We were always waiting.
    I stop reading her dabbles and letters because I am afraid. What if her letters trigger something unpredictable inside of me? Like my mom, I could go off track. What makes me immune from retreating to the woods or skipping out the front door into the wild, blue yonder?

NOW
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    I sit across from my aunt Joanna and Kim at the dinner table while my mom continues to sleep and dream in the next room. The house is quiet and heavy. We’ve ordered Mexican food from the local diner, and Kim sets out a six-pack of Corona and lime wedges. We’re sitting around the table making conversation but I’m not really present—maybe none of us are.
    My thoughts keep sliding into the undeniable truth: she is dying . The sentence plays over and over like a recording that can’t move forward. I want to retreat upstairs to be alone and read more of her letters. But I’m also afraid to read them all at once. I suppose a kind of measured self-control defines my nature. Similar to the way that I never finish some of my favorite books—because I don’t want the story to end and I don’t want the characters to leave me.
    My aunt sets down a plate of leftover green-and-red Christmas cookies. It’s odd to be celebrating this holiday under the same roof as my mother, since growing up, we rarely saw her at Christmas. I excuse myself to make a call home. Bella answers.
    â€œWhen are you coming back?” is her first question.
    â€œI’m sorry, Bella. I don’t know yet.”
    â€œSo you’re