Worries - by Anna Zhang

Worries

by Anna Zhang

I worry for my mother.

my mother who is the youngest sister of five kids;

my mother who made the same journey twice to foreign lands without her siblings,

my mother who released me from my suffocating umbilical cords with a c-section;

and my mother who watched us leave for college from the garage.

with her eighty year old parents and middle aged siblings with their children in China, with her high school friends in China,

I worry for my middle-aged mother socially locked into her suburban town,

Not even able to befriend her usual grocery store cashier.

I’ve spent the past month wallowing, worrying my mother.

with two days left before I leave again, I worry for my mother.

My suitcase is packed, yet my worries flood from our basement heater to her room upstairs.

Does she get lonely in this house? when we’re all gone?

Does she think about her mother, who can barely smile without scaring her grandson?

At 19, a year after adulthood, I feel the consequences of my inconsiderate teenage actions, and the haunting closeness of my eventual severance from the house my mother can’t seem to get out of.