The Old Woman and The Thread

She sucked on the tip of her thread and twirled it as she pulled it out of her mouth, to stiffen it. She had been that thread all her life: the thread bestowed with the impossible feat of slipping into the thin needle's eye. And her life was a different time; education for her was the eye of the needle, to become a doctor for her was the eye of the needle, to survive her 23-year old’s death was the needle’s eye, and all these eyes she managed to thread, the one in hand was not going to be a big deal. She took the needle close to her face, closed one eye to take aim and stabbed at it with the wet silk strand.

Her mother was against her joining college for a medical degree. In the old woman’s memories, the mother had long ceased to take the shape of a human; she was a mere shadow of thin black smoke pressuring down on her shoulders. Her stomach grumbled from the hunger, empty and tired like it had suffered a fever, her hands shaking with the thread and needle.

The memory of her son was that of a long lost pet, a cloud of comforting light. The memories of him weren’t mere words, the memories were the grief that sank her heart. “A cloud of light and grief, dark grief within the same memory?” you may ask. It happens with growth, it happens with understanding, knowing and believing. The sad part about those memories though, of her son, was that she couldn’t see him either. She kept stabbing at the pinhole. The thread hit its edge a couple of times and bent. She put it back in her mouth, rolled it on her tongue to straighten it and pulled it out. The visuals slowly started coming back, the chubby cheeks of the toddler, the smell of baby, his soft feet trampling her bosoms when she changed his diaper, his giggles, the flimsy facial hair of the teenager, it all slowly came back, his first stubble beard, the smell of his deodorant it all came back. How cruel life was to give her a glimpse of that warmth, a warmth that was forever lost in the depth of her demon’s cave. She had had not craved to touch her son’s face for a long time, she had forgotten to want to live without grief. What she would have done for him to stand beside, and rock her chair. Her eyes burned, tearing. No cry could expel her troubles. She had ceased trying to thread the needle but kept jabbing the eye mechanically. How painful youth was in comparison to the task at hand. She opened her eyes, the needle was threaded.