Mother – “far ahead”
When I lived in London and was having another bout of depression, I asked my mother if she ever cared about my health or my work. Neither of my parents ever tried to call me unless my sister set up the skype for them. When we did talk on skype, they’d run out of questions, and my mother would have to go off to the kitchen to tend to the cooking pot. My mother answered that she did care about my well-being and wondered how I was, what I ate, who I dated, but she worried she might not understand my life at all. She said I had gone too far ahead. She used “ahead,” not “away.” The distance she had felt was more than just geographical.
I slipped away from her, not because I was particularly independent-minded or adventurous, but because I felt disconnected from home. I grew up to wish for a different life as my mother’s. The more I successfully derailed from the path, the frailer my sense of connection to my mother became.