She was the first to speak. "You are just too wonderful for me to deal with."
"You don't know how wonderful you are. I am just a mirror."
At that she slowly moved her lips closer to mine and planted a soft kiss. As she paused, she brushed her cheek with mine and hugged me close. Her arms wanted to wrap me all over her.
"Your identity remains anonymous as I had promised." I said to her after we broke our hug.
She smiled. "What did you do with the other pictures?"
"I have deleted them." I just answered with a straight face.
"All of them? Why?"
"Too risky. I couldn't take the risk. And I thought to myself, 'Why would I need the pictures, when I have you'."
"True." She smiled. "I would love to pose for you whenever you need any pictures."
That sentence seemed like hot furnace melting the iron of my heart. I felt warmth building inside me, bubbles brewed inside my stomach, and my lungs filled with air and I gasped as though I was suffocating. Her desire to please overwhelmed me.
"I click away every moment, everyday, with my eyes." I smiled with a wickedness to lighten the mood.
"I know you do. I was just referring to the times when I am not around." she smiled back.
At the beginning of Fall, the weather had turned rough. There were thunderstorms and it had poured heavily one day. I had spent time working in the garden. One morning I woke up feeling very tired. My body ached and I felt weak. The next day I had a soar throat and then it got worse by the minute. By the end of the day, my nose was running and I felt very ill. By the time mom was home, I was in my bed, and I didn't feel well. She took my temperature and she advised me to take rest. By next morning I wasn't well. In fact far from it, I was feeling worse. Now I was coughing too. I was poorly for the whole day.
Mom called me in the afternoon from the office but I could barely talk to her. In the evening she drove me to the hospital and they diagnosed it to being flu. But along with that, I seemed to have caught a virus for the throat infection too. That had topped it all. I was given some medication to put me at ease. But that didn't help much. For the next whole week I suffered quiet terribly. During the afternoon mom used to come and visit me during her lunch break but most of the day I was asleep. I didn't eat much, because I had lost my appetite. My throat hurt like hell and I couldn't drink much. My taste buds were kinda lost. Anything I tried eating tasted awful. She managed to feed me some soup in the evenings and her caresses made me think of eating a few bites. But it was a long road for recovery.
During the worst two days, I woke up in the middle of nightmares. During the whole day, as I tried to sleep, I dreamt that I was in isolated places, like a desert or at sea, alone and my mom was being taken away from me, in front of my eyes. It seemed like she was being 'escorted' away from me. Her expressions were of helplessness, as though it wasn't in her powers to stop from being taken away from me. All I could see were her tears. She wasn't pleased to be taken away from me. But her helplessness was evident in those tears. I saw myself just standing there watching it happen, without doing anything to prevent it. After she was gone, I could feel the devastation that would hit me. I would feel overwhelmed with grief of loosing her. And usually that would wake me up. I used to wake up sweating.
If I tried to sleep again, this theme repeated several times during my sleep. Some times I would see her in an accident, and then at other times I would loose her in a big crowd. For two days I could not sleep for the fear of these nightmares. One evening when she was next to me on my bed, I told her that I couldn't sleep and that she shouldn't leave me. She reckoned I was not sleeping well from my poor diet. So she made every attempt in encouraging me to eat properly that night. I barely managed some food. She also suggested that I was imagining things because of the high fever I was running from time to time. That day she sat next to me and coaxed me to eat a bowl of soup, some vegetables and some rice. Her loving concern was evident and her plea for me to eat something couldn't keep my protests for long. I gave in to her love and affection and ate from her hand.
The nightmares stopped after about a day later. Things also started changing and I started eating more. Mom was more than loving to take care of me. She used to check up on me every few times. Every time I received a kiss and a caress, her touch was tender and I could feel its love even in the ill state that I was. It made me feel so special. Especially when she caressed my face, she ran her palm over my face and my hair, it used to melt me and short of making me hard it used to give me goose bumps. The caresses were the best part of the day for me. I could have her caress me like that all day. As I recovered I asked her not to stay too close to me in fear of further infection to her. She laughed it away and said she had had a flu jab and I wasn't to worry about it.
"There are very few things that can keep me away from you." She smiled at me looking deep in my eyes.
"I cannot bear remembering those nightmares I saw when I was ill. I keep seeing your face in tears." I told her.
"It was just your imagination and the fever playing on your mind. Don't even think of it anymore." She caressed my cheek and planted a kiss on it.
After a few days more, I seemed to have come out of it in one piece. The whole ordeal was a strain on my physique. But more so, it changed the way I looked at my mom. One night when she had kissed me good night, I lay in bed recalling the nightmares I had. I quivered at the thought of them ever coming true. And then a thought occurred to me that sent shivers down my spine – what if by some freak of an incident, I lost my mom. The illness had given me a wake up call to think of what I had that I enjoyed so much. Of course it was just a flu infection but it had debilitated me enough to miss out on my mom's company. Worse things could happen. I didn't want to think of them. I had realised I didn't have time to dwindle away. If I enjoyed something very much, I ought to acknowledge it and reciprocate it while I had it. I had realised the threat of time and mishap. I didn't want to loose what I had with mom to either of them.
After I had recovered, I watched my mom with new gaze. I could see her deepest desires more apparently now. It was heart warming to see she loved me just as much as I loved her. And that is what made it worse; if I were to make a mistake in interpreting her advances, I would be jeopardising the one and only thing that I had in my life that I cared for more than my life itself. But her desires had been apparent for a long while. It was just my hesitation that held me back. The rational side of my mind was telling me to be careful as not to ruin things and the emotional side was telling me not to waste anymore more time.
One day, when I was home from college, I noticed mom had left a message that she would be late from work. She apologised and had left a kiss on the note. I smiled at that.
I decided to make an evening out of that chance. So rather than spend time cooking something in the kitchen, I drove out to the restaurant and got some fine dishes to take away. I came home, set a low table in the lounge, got the fire started and lit some candles all around the lounge. I set the table and waited for her to get home. She arrived about 20 minutes later. As she stepped into the lounge, she was surprised.
"I've got you your favourite, tonight." I smiled at her. "If you want to change, I will heat up the food, while you get changed."
She seemed to be full of bubbles. She hurried to her room and came out strapping the robe around her.
As we sat down, I turned on the radio and tuned her favourite channel. It was love songs from the 80s. She used to love that channel especially at night.
As we munched our way through the dinner, she ate from her eyes and her lips, feasting on the food in the plate and in front of her eyes. Some of her favourite songs came up on the radio during the meal. As she drank from her glass, she swayed slowly to the rhythm and sang along to some of her favourites. Her eyes poured out with thanks at such a wonderful end to a long day she had had.
"I wanted to give you a good time.Hope you enjoyed it today." I whispered into her ear as we slow danced at one of the songs on the radio.
"It was such a change. I like the idea of the take away. I would have hated to think you had to stay in the kitchen to cook all this."
"I know. And I didn't know how long you were going to be away. So I didn't take a chance to cook something myself."
"And think of all the cleaning up you saved yourself." She giggled, "I know you hate that."
