It’S Like The Sea

My mother frequently sends me a text message saying: is all well? A rhetorical question that you can only answer with a ‘yes’.

I chat with her on the phone sometimes. This is new, we never used to. I tell her unimportant details of my life, how I went out and with whom. That I’m still in my pajamas. How that one exhibition was she might want to visit. That it would be good to go away for a few days after Christmas. But – oh well – tickets are expensive. And yes, my son is back home tomorrow, and so now let’s talk about all the other people we know.

Then we say: gotta get going, time to hang up, hi to dad and whoever, and then she says, “you know what? It’s good to dive down. Just don’t go too deep. Because the deeper you go the darker it gets and you have no business being all the way down there. It’s like the sea. It’s so much more beautiful on the surface.”

Is all well? Yes.