“Yeah, at first, when it was fun and it made me feel special. But then she turned it into hell for me, and I wound up hating it.”
“Why is Olga like that?” This was the thing I truly needed to know.
“Maya, my mother isn’t a good person. That’s the truth. I know it’s hard to accept. It took me years to. Olga has never loved anybody except herself, and because of that, she’s never known remorse or restraint. Having a child, giving birth, those are just biological processes, they don’t mean love is necessarily there. The instinct to protect and care for your child when the doctor first lets you hold it… That’s something not every mother has.”
A moan escaped me. I knew she was right. But that made me ask another question. “You ran away, though. You left me with her. So that instinct, that love—do you not have it, either?”
She nodded, her face the very picture of grief, and I thought for a moment that maybe the blame wasn’t all hers, that we aren’t much more than the circumstances we find on our path.
“It’s true. I had you because I saw you as a way out of that hell. But when you were born, I did everything I could to take care of you. I tried, but I didn’t know how to be a mother, and Olga wouldn’t let me. And I just had to go. I didn’t have another option.”
“And now?”
“I still don’t know how to be a mother to you.”
Those words burned into me like acid, through my skin and muscles and into my bones. Straight through to my heart. Something broke in me, I swear I could hear the cracking sound, and she burst into tears as I confessed, “I always thought you stopped coming to see me because I’d done something wrong.”
“No, Maya. You never did anything wrong.”
“What was it, then?”
“I never stopped feeling guilty for abandoning you, and when I’d spend a few days with you, it just hurt too bad. I saw you growing up, but at the same time withering under my mother’s cruelty, and I knew I was the one responsible for it. And so seeing you was no relief. It actually made me hate myself more because I wasn’t strong enough to take you away from there.”
I lashed out. “So you just stopped seeing me and didn’t even give me a reason that might help me understand why?”
“I was a coward. Again. I’m still ashamed of it.”
I felt sorry for her, even though I knew I had every right to hate her. At the same time, I just wanted to erase all that from my memory, go to sleep, and wake up with it gone. Life would be so much easier that way. But my childish side, my malicious side, the one that wanted to hurt her, reappeared, “I never opened any of the presents you sent me all those years.”
“I know. Your grandfather told me.”
“And I only came here to tell you I hate you for abandoning me. I blame you for everything Olga made me suffer, and I won’t waste another second of my life thinking of you.”
“I understand. And you’re perfectly right to feel that way.”
I was right. I was right in everything I said. I was right to want to turn around and leave without looking back. I knew everything I’d come there to learn. I had answers to my questions, and what I’d thought was just a possibility—that Giulio was my father—was nowa certainty. I could turn the last page, put down the book, and start another story, as if none of that mattered anymore. Start over, from zero, with a new story.
Except that I couldn’t…
A new question, one I hadn’t seen coming, rose up inside me, not from my head, but lower down, behind my ribs, in the center of my chest. In that emptiness that at the same time was always spilling over with longing, desperation, and fear. A question that didn’t make sense because it contradicted everything I was feeling. I managed to get out the wordThen, but the tears burst through and stopped me, and the sobs started strangling me, and I cursed.
“What, Maya?” my mother asked. She, too, was suffering.
“Then why…why do I want you to hug me?”
Trembling, wiping her face, she looked at me like a startled cat ready to take off running. But then her expression changed subtly. If I hadn’t been looking close, I could have missed it. I saw a spark of something: determination, inspiration, courage. And she rushed over to me as if an invisible hand had pushed her. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed me tight. My arms hung at my sides, my face was buried in her hair, her scent filled my nose, and I cried. I remembered when I was a little girl. The feeling was agonizing, but I must have needed it. And she held me, her embrace never slackening.
“I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry. I hope one day you can forgive me.”
For once, I was really, truly her daughter. Knowing that was crushing, but at the same time consoling. Like a scalpel that cuts you open, but at the same time cauterizes the wound. We held each other a long time in silence. Then she took my hand and we walked together.
We talked. Strolled. Talked more.
I realized something that day: that we only see one side of things, but we live as if that small something we know and perceive is absolutely everything. We thinkourtruth isthetruth. That the reasonsthat make sense to us are the only reasons. But it’s not that simple. We forget that every person has their own perspective on things, that they too confuse what they see and believe—their truth, their reasons—with everything.
My mother had her reality. One that was hard for me to understand, but that didn’t make it less true. It was just different. I had suffered because of her; she had suffered because of others. She’d made mistakes, the same as me. Those errors had caused terrible pain to other people, but also to ourselves.
How do you forgive a person? It depends. There is no magic formula. Some people never do it. Some people need a lifetime. Some people can do it instantly. But the important thing is to truly forgive, with no conditions, no expectations, without looking to get anything out of it. To forgive for your own sake because you need that to keep going. Forgiveness isn’t something you concede to another; it’s a privilege you allow yourself. A freedom that doesn’t cancel suffering, because your suffering will always be there inside you. The past can’t be erased. But the wounds can close and scar over, and life can go on.
