:: Dog days ::

Oh, the weather. I'm tired and parched; the sun is a cosmic heathen, a lunatic mad with rabid power. My grandmother made ginseng tea, sweetened with figs, to ward off the heat―her maternal instinct to overcome nature is both tender and amusing. 'Must drink ah, to keep the heat down,' she instructed over the phone. 'I put in extra red dates for you.'

Two hours of effort, three flasks of tea, and one very loving grandmother.

***

11.38, p.m. I placed a cup of ginseng tea―heated―on my mother's work desk. She nodded. Her exhaustion is poison ivy, tangling, dangling. I patted her back―bony, as it has been for years now―and I told her to sleep early. She shook her head no: a mother's work is never finished, and a teacher's duty is never done. Class 5K is not doing well, she said. She needed to plan a remedial syllabus for them. And then there's the Level Meeting to plan for. And then a Cultural Trip to budget for. And then―

'Are you very busy?' she asked suddenly.
Guilt grabbed at me with its rigid fingers. 'Well―yes.' Busy with social platitudes. A dinner here, a coffee there, friend after friend after friend.

I wanted to remind her about Europe―my trip is less than three weeks away―but the knives of my hedonistic selfishness were cutting flesh to bone. How can I help, how can I make your life better, how can I bring that girlish grin back into your eyes? Mechanically, she flipped open another exercise book, and in her gentle, absent-minded way, she smiled goodnight to me, her eyes watery with sleep.

Four units of workplan, two classes of worksheets, and one very selfless mother.

And a daughter who can't mop away her mother's exhaustion; a daughter who can't iron out the kinks in her father's life; a daughter who can't tutor her sisters in the discordant lessons of growing up.