The woman who was there before
She had a name before she became someone's mother. She had opinions about films, a way she liked her chai, things she wanted to do before the wanting got quietly set aside. You know this because she has told you, once or twice, in the middle of something else, not as complaint, but as fact, the way you state a thing you have made peace with. "I used to paint," she says, and moves on. She does not linger. The not-lingering is the whole story.
