The Stars and the Cookie Jar

Aiain called me today.

Aiain called me today.

Mother's Day.

With his ten Euro birthday money, he called me.

He said "Hello, hello, do you remember me?"

And then I was crying, and calling him back, and forgetting (oh, shit) how to dial an Irish number; and he's ten years old now. I call him on his birthday and Christmas day, but I have not seen him in two and a half years. He lives with narrow-minded people who apparently love him and treat him wonderfully; every year we enact the bitter little ritual where they tell me to fuck off, thanks. He knows none of this, and so somehow he got to thinking that I might ever, ever forget him.

I think I'd love him if I saw him on the street; I think I'd love him if he didn't have that odd point-chinned fox's face of his mother's.

And he has just finished reading Harry Potter et la Coupe de Feu, so I, in true sometime-parent fashion, have had dispatched to the Outer Rings of Cork, IRL, one copy of Harry Potter et l'Ordre du Phenix.

There was free shipping! Leave me 'lone about the 27 Euro!

We talked some about his mother, but mostly we talked about school, sea-bathing, going to Kinsale with his best friend Nate who has a computer, and Cedric Diggory. He also asked me how to make a cream cheese and olive sandwich. (Green, stuffed olives, if you wondered.)

He calls me 'Mom', one of the few words remaining him in a very Fall River accent, completely unselfconscious, completely guileless. Neither of us ever asked him or told him to call me that. I'd swear it.

"Maw-awm, when are you going to take me back to Massachusetts to live?"

If I thought I could give him a better life than he has...