“So, how is France?” asked my geographically inept brother-in-law.

“It’s not France, it’s Belgium… and it is fine” I said, when I could have possibly make essays and essays of how good was Belgium compared to this burrow,  how its people and culture were by far more accepting and livable than this place. But instead I just said fine.

“They still speak French don’t they?” He went on, trying not to look stupid, at the best.

“Yes” I said which was partly true “Then?” he asked, as if he had just been saying the same thing as me and I was trying to make him feel stupid. He is stupid. People in Saint Pierre et Miquelon speak French, and they are certainly not France. But that was not the point.

“Harold, don’t distract him, Russ what are we going to do?” asked my sister, next to the dish washer. She still had that spark in her eyes, a very sassy and bossy spark, it used to be a hot blaze, she used to be a blaze, now, one had to look in very deep, pass through the premature wrinkles, trough the nylon dress from the Everythingatonedollar store. But it was still there, somewhere.

“I think we should call the cops” I said, not really thinking what I was saying. I was still dizzy; no twelve hour nap snaps you out of a coming-back-to-

home-after-fifteen-years kind of experience. “The cops?!” she yelled “are you nuts?” she brought some reason into the situation, what was I thinking? Cops to search a senile seventy nine year old lady who could be in danger, what an occurrence. “Then you tell me, how does this work?” I asked, with just a little hint of challenge on it.

“You are right, excuse me my mother always escapes the house while watching the Super Bowl, I should know what to do, these things happen every day” she said, rubbing me my absence in the face. “Sorry, I just, I don’t know…” I babble, I had nothing to say. “Of course you don’t, it’s my entire fault. You don’t have to know, you don’t live here, I do, I should know.” She said, looking faintly.

“Why not the cops?” I asked innocently. “Because” she sighed “They would only think she went crazy and is around the neighborhood scarring little children o

r something” she said, making hard assumptions, “she constantly yells at them about being thieves” she said, noticing my questioning expression.

“She’s fine, she just sometimes remembers that time when dad and her were stopped by some guys dressed as cops..” I interrupted her “and then stole their car, yes I remember” I said, remembering more than I thought I would.

“Had she been like that lately?” I asked , fearing to ask the real question “Like what? Yelling at people?” she said, like it was nothing, then she noticed my stare “Russ, she’s fine, she’s just old and she sometimes forgets a thing or two, I bet it even happens to you” she said, trying to make things better, I knew she wasn’t that optimistic.

“She has asked a lot about you lately though” she said, looking away. I knew it was not her intention, well maybe just a little, to make me feel like crap, about leaving, about quitting here and going away. It was not her intention, it was not my fault my mother got lost, yet I felt like crap, at the best.

“Has she expressed wishes to go somewhere?” I asked, as if this was just another case of another patient. “Don’t bring your shrink crap here, she’s your mo

ther.” Lisa said, she was usually up for the shrink crap, it was reasonable she would be pissed. “Now Harold and I are going to go to the areas around, you look in her room to see if there’s something that could help” she said, perfectly knowing my posture against staying in that house, knowing of all things searching for mom’s stuff was the most hurting “All right?” she asked. “Okay” I said.

Soon they were gone in his red huddled van. And there I was left alone, in a house full of ghosts I had escaped some years ago, and the dead don’t like it when you ignore them. I climbed the shrieking stairs and walked to the master room, which was now of course being used by Lisa and Harold. It was entirely different, no more red tapestry all over the place, or china angels hanging from the ceiling, they were all scary, in their own very special way.

And so I entered the next door, I assumed she lived there now, it was full of needless

 decorations, which seemed like the plunder of all the aquariums in the state of Kentucky. Her bizarre taste had always been very distinctive of her, which didn’t meant it was new, or fancy or ahead of her time, it was just bizarre. There was a wax turtle shell being used as a night table, held by four weak sticks of wood.

It took me shorter that I had expected to dive into her stuff, begin a journey of reviving the left to dead stories. I even found letter of her and my father, back when she moved from Pennsylvania to Lancaster, Kentucky. In the letters my father seemed nice, romantic and longing, my mother seemed naïve and self-absorbed. In reality he was an abusive jerk and she was naïve and self-absorbed. They got married when he arrived, by according to her a miracle, and according to him, the only ride he could get out of Penn. He was coming back after a sales job across the country selling pewter, according to her. He had left home, had left an apathetic pregnant woman, with an annoying three years old he had never even liked, according to him. Her husband had run away because of the kids, according to her. M

y father had never existed, according to us.

Looking among her stuff made me wonder if I was looking either for my mother or my past, maybe it was just the curiosity to bring it all back, to make a self induced crisis. Maybe that was the plan, but the subconscious had forgotten to send a memo. He looked at albums, which was actually just one album, containing my sister’s and me childhood photos, always taken by someone else, mom was too busy with her happy pills, she used to be sad, all the time, at the very least.

I remembered that between my ninth and tenth year I used to dream a lot about my family being dead, every night, I would not tell anyone. I always k

ept it to myself in case someone thought I was crazy, but mostly for the uncomfortable feeling it was. I had thought that maybe they were premonitions of my mom and sister, and unknown father going to die. I had never met my father, but I had always imagined him as an uglier version of G.I Joe for some reason, even if he had left a kid needs his heroes. Anyways, thinking about that being something I was seeing made scared, made me be afraid of the future.

I had also thought that it was maybe an internal wish to end with my mother’s suffering and my sister’s huge obligation of almost raising me, being only three years older. Maybe, I thought, I would lose control one day and killed them; that made me be afraid of myself, and the dead, and the future.

And even years later, when I took a course on dreaming interpretations, and I learned that seeing someone die in a dream is expressing the inner anger we don’t want to accept, so subconsciously we just kill them; even knowing that didn’t help my fear of the dead, my fear of myself. Because after all, even with the psychology behind it, something in me still thought it was me wanting them to really die.

There I was, surrounded by old papers with no value, other than the one given by time and memories, surrounded by the past, by everything I had left behind, of my mother. Then I found the poem she once found in a one dollar book store sale, it was folded in four exact squares, it was still complete, no time damage. The poem was by some random author, it was sort of good, “My angels fly away”, I had always thought it was her way of saying good bye in case she abruptly left, or I abruptly left her. The latter was the case. And today, the day I wanted to make amends, the day I started working against my ungrateful child tag, that day my mother disappears, by choice, again.

Somewhere around the memory of when she went away to Philadelphia for a week without telling us, and her amber beads necklace, I noticed there was nothing there that could tell me where she was. And so I moved on, to the next phase, thinking where a seventy year old lady who was abandoned by everyone in her life, except her daughter, could possibly be? It was no longer his mother in question, it was just a seventy year old lady who was abandoned by everyone in her life, except her daughter. Then I remembered something about wings and water.

Not two minutes passed when I heard a deep hoarse voice “We’re home, we haven’t find her yet”. Maybe she was missing for good now, “no luck in her recurring places?” I asked, trying to make the possibilities narrower. “She has no recurring places, she doesn’t go anywhere” she said, as if I was conducting and FBI case on a petty thief. “Did you look in the park?” I asked, getting my coat. “Erm… no, she hates parks” Lisa said, remembering her mother saying so “She does says to hate lots of things”. “Let’s go” I said, and we left the house.

Twenty minutes later we were in the park with a fountain on it, it had little sculptured angels dancing around it, but one, a special one, which was just there, standing, looking at the water. And next to that angel was a seventy year old lady who was abandoned by everyone in her life, except her daughter. I approached, she saw me, she went back to looking at the water, along with the angel.

“Mother…”

“I know, I just need to be here for a while”

“I just…”

“Don’t worry, we’ll sit and chat in a bit”

“We were so worried and…”

“Wait, I need time, one prepares for a moment for fifteen years, then it comes, and it finds you in a park trying to avoid it”

“Sorry”

“How did you know?”

“My flying angels”

“I guess I’ve came to an age where I am predictable”

“It’s just that you loved so much that part…”

“ My winged friends, don’t you leave
you have to still find what you came for
and I will help you for as long as I live.
Just look into the water mirror, and there will be the before”

“Exactly…”

“Now it just seems childish gibberish, I guess I am do becoming predictable”

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By I'm the penguin