I called my mom
Alicja Mackiewicz
2st March 2023
Last week, I bought a pair of flared, light blue jeans. It was the first piece of clothing I have bought for myself since summer, or maybe even since last winter or something like that. I bought them on Wednesday, that was the day that I decided to do nothing but relax and maybe go to buy some clothes at kringloop. That was what I did and that is where I bought the jeans. They remind me of the jeans my mom used to wear when I was a child and when she was the most beautiful person in the world and when everything I wanted to do is to be with her and hug her and listen to her and smell her.
On my way to the shop, I called my mom. It was the first time since Christmas that we were about to talk. It was because she has been texting me, and one day she asked 'how are you', and I finally decided to reply. 'Not so well I think', this is what I said. I replied because in fact I wasn't doing so well. Of course I felt bad because I haven't been replying her for months and suddenly I am replying now while I'm in crisis but I don't know, maybe that's one thing I will allow myself to do as someone's child. The relationship with my mom is maybe the only one in which I consciously allow myself to be irresponsible.
This year, my hair grew long. It was my intention to grow them long because I look and feel better in long hair. Also, I haven't been cutting it myself for two years now, but it changed last week because the tips of my hair have started to look awfully dry and damaged and I started having many pimples and all this makes me feel very insecure, so I decided to cut the tips of my hair. That was a mistake. I stopped cutting my own hair because when I do it, nothing seems right, and I keep obsessing about if it's even and I keep compulsively cutting it again and again.
It has been a week, and I haven't touched the scissors again, and I haven't cut much of the hair, and I hope it stays this way because I really love my hair.
It hasn't been like this always but these days my hair are really important to me. They are long and soft and curly, and they protect me. They remind me of my mom when she was the most beautiful person in the world and all I wanted to do all the time was to touch her hair, and then she would close her eyes and say "mmmm" because she loved when somebody touched her hair and scratched her head. She would also scratch my head, and my back, and I would fall asleep on the sofa with her while watching TV at night, and she would stay awake long after and I wouldn't have to worry about anything. Unfortunately those were some of the few moments when I could fall asleep at all.
I called my mom on the way to buy pants, and maybe a shirt and maybe a cup or something. She picked up, and asked whats up, and I told her all about whats up, and that I am completely lost and I don't know what to do with this and this and this, and now those were really important things. She laughed and said that she feels like she's listening to herself. I got a bit angry because she started talking about herself again. But then she stopped so I told her about my plans and my ideas and dreams, and she listened and then she said something about herself again so I rolled my eyes, and then she gave me some advice and she said she is proud of me and that I am a great person and that she will send me some stuff that she used when she had to plan a lot and prioritize some stuff. I said "okay", because I don't know, I don't feel like using her stuff. And then, when I was already browsing through cups, she asked about her coming in May. And if it's still happening from my side. I said yes, but in my heart I said no, and we said to get back to it on the weekend.
I picked up four cups. One looks elegant, one is a metal camping cup, one is a funny purple cup with a yellow dog-shaped handle, and one is my new morning coffee cup with a plate.
At home, we have mostly very boring cups. This is because my dad bought them, and he wants things to look clean and new and simple. The other part of the cups are all mine and I like them but there aren't enough beautiful and funny cups and when I will live alone again I hope to regain my passion for collecting beautiful and funny objects, and I will not have to put up with my dad's pedantic traits, even though I think in fact he isn't so pedantic but still he has some weird preferences and he wants all the cups to be white. Anyway, one cup we have is my coffee cup, my favourite cup, and my beloved cup.
My coffee cup is small, shaped like a short cylinder, so it’s wider than taller. It has straight walls and the bottom is flat and round. I think in general it looks a little bit like me, although I am not wider than taller, but I am short and I have wide shoulders and I think my skeleton looks like a stable one, and I have wide flat feet that connect me strongly to the ground.
On the side it has a small handle which is quite thin and white, and proportionally it’s maybe even a little bit surprising how thin this handle is regarding the structure of the rest of the cup. About the colour, it is green, with a pattern of oak leaves (also green), but it’s not a whole cup but it's something like a rectangle shaped, glazed print that covers almost the whole surface but not all of it, so the edges, bottom and handle are white.
I would say this cup is not very stylish. It comes from early 2000s, from a set of dishes typical for these times in Poland. This kind of shapes and colours. Everyone had dishes like that. But it's my beloved cup because I remember it from childhood, and it was one of the cups that my mom would drink instant coffee from every morning before doing anything else, with a bit of condensed milk with magnesium, and a flat teaspoon of brown sugar in it. At first she would just use condensed milk, then condensed milk with magnesium, and then she started mixing half-half with regular milk. She would sit in the kitchen next to the fridge and read a paper on psychology or plan and write in her notebooks and stuff like that. And then she would make me an omelette. I took the cup with me as one of the few things collected when we were finally moving everything out of our apartment, when my parents sold it, long time after their divorce, 5 years after I moved out.
My cup is very important to me, I am happy when I drink from it and I am uncomfortable whenever someone else uses it, but I don't say it because I think that’s a little bit obsessive behaviour, and I also don’t say anything when someone puts it in the dishwasher but maybe I should because I think actually you shouldn't. I'm scared that one day this cup will break because I don't have another one from the set, but I try not to obsess about it too because life goes on and I decided to learn not to obsess about objects so much.
The last cup I mentioned, which I bought this time at kringloop, is from the same era of dishes, and it looks like a sister one to my cup. But this one also has a plate, in general it’s a little bit thicker, and it has a different pattern. It's covered with off-white and light, dirty yellow kind of rectangle backgrounds, and instead of leaves, it had cobalt poppy leaves on. I haven't drunk from it yet but I already put it in the dishwasher and I will turn it on tonight.