Our mammalian love is like this, mom: silent and primitive

PalmaThe only daughter is having her birthday: one, specifically. And, with only a few days difference, my mother too. She's turning 55. I like that I fell into this coincidence, because it reminds me more than ever that without a unique mother there would have been no only daughter. I started writing more inwardly and less outwardly when I discovered that the world could be explained through the stories we keep within ourselves. And the story with my mother is one of them. The first one, I'd say. And perhaps, one day, it will also be the last. Because it's a story that never ends.

“I think the relationship with my mother will be the theme that marks my thirties”, my friend Marina said one day. And I think it will be the theme that marks my life, and hopefully my writing. As cliché and Almodovarian as it sounds. The relationship with my mother is the theme that I weave every time I tackle a text. I don't know how many notes I've opened on my phone trying to decipher some of the complexities that make up our way of interacting.

!!!– what does he say when I ask him if he wants to have dinner together.

Okay!!!– that she puts when I ask her if she wants to have lunch together.

The way my mother and I relate to each other is among the things that intrigue me most in life. Our language is one of care, of preventative guilt, of atomic feelings. It has never been one of words, nor hugs, nor kisses, nor caresses. It is a giving everything to each other without reservation. We love each other with discretion and forcefulness, because that is the only way we know how to do it. I think I have explored almost all the ways to tell her I love you, and all without being able to do it verbally. Our love is like this, mammalian: silent and primitive.

Both she and I have inherited a custom from her family: giving one or two kisses to everyone – depending on the level of kinship – to greet and say goodbye. A ritual at times extreme and démodéby La Oreja de Van Gogh, together in the car, wearing bikinis, on the way to the beach. Amaia was so right – Amaia Romero, the other Amaia –: “

Those years will never return. / Realize it mom.Lo que te conté mientras te hacías la dormida, by La Oreja de Van Gogh, together in the car, bikinis on, on the way to the beach. Amaia – Amaia Romero, the other Amaia – was so right: “Si nos encontráramos con veinticuatro años. / Nos confesaríamos en la cola del baño. / Me harías una peca, te pondría pintalabios. /M-A-P-S”.

But as she rightly says, “Esos años no volverán nunca más. / Date cuenta mamá.”, and I will love them just the same, both of them, in silence and with force, for who we are and who we were. My mother, as the girl who dazzled me with her navel piercing and the moon tattoo on her shoulder; as the friend I wanted to have: with her own car and house, and curly hair with golden highlights. And me, as her doll, her cub. We will always love each other like this, like when I still didn't imagine that one day we would grow old.