Little Fires

Watching Little Fires Everywhere was a meditative experience for me. The character of Mia played by Kerry Washington stood out the most - she has so many layers of mystery and complexity to her. Yet, as they are revealed a little at a time, all her actions become imbued with a pristine clarity as if they were all self-evident. I had heard an interview of Washington where she was discussing this role and cited her own mother as the model she used to play the character of Mia. I was specially struck by how Washington described her mother as distant but not lacking warmth. 

Those words seemed to be exactly the ones I have been seeking my whole life to describe my own mother. That is when I knew I had to watch the show to better understand what Washington had meant. My mother is an enigma to this day and I only know what she chose to reveal which was very little. The war of attrition to understand her at a human level corroded our relationship and came a point when I realized the cost of such understanding would be to lose the many things I did value about her. It was not worthwhile for me to carry on my crusade to achieving an honest relationship with her. I would need to learn to do without.

Yet, my mother gave me confidence, she believed in my ability to do things I never thought I could and most importantly she taught me the virtue of hard work and pulling one's weight in life. She is fiercely independent and would never take anything from anyone that she could not return - this extends even to human warmth. She could be incredibly warm when I did not try to pry into her deeply secretive soul. It only took a few decades for me to learn how to bask in that warmth without being scorched by my rage of never truly knowing who my mother is.