That night I couldn’t sleep. I sat at the kitchen table, with a glass of water I didn’t drink, staring into space while listening to the building’s nighttime noises. My ex-boyfriend’s mother’s confession kept replaying in my head, like a carousel I couldn’t stop.

My son came home late from a school meeting. I watched him walk in: tall, thin, with that calm smile that always managed to soothe my world. I didn’t know whether to tell him what had happened. I didn’t know if I had the right to keep it to myself, but I also didn’t know if he wanted to carry that burden.

“Mom, are you okay?” he asked when he saw how serious I was.

“I saw your paternal grandmother today,” I blurted out, before I could change my mind.

He blinked in surprise. He knew almost nothing about his paternal family. I had explained the basics to him when he was younger: that his father had left and that I didn’t know anything about them anymore. Because it was the truth. So, yes: I never lied to him. I only had half the story.

He listened attentively as I told him everything that had happened at the market. Every word. Every tear that woman shed. Each confession shattered my version of events.

When I finished, he rested his arms on the table and took a deep breath.

“And how do you feel?” he asked.

The question took me by surprise. I expected him to be angry, to ask questions about his father, to try to find someone to blame. But no. He asked me. And that gesture, so simple, so mature… broke me.

“Confused,” I admitted. “Furious, too. I don’t know what to do with all this. I don’t know how… how to forgive something like this.”

“You don’t have to forgive anything if you don’t want to,” he said calmly. “But maybe you need to heal the wound.”

Heal it.

Continue READING…

Continue READING