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While We Slept, She Stayed Awake
On Distance, Mothers, and the Invisible Cost of Expat Life
The other day, I overheard my mother on the phone. She was speaking in hushed tones to a friend, the way mothers often do when they believe their daughters are out of earshot.
“Oh, I sleep well now. My daughter is back home.”
It was a simple statement, but it carried the weight of two decades. For twenty years, my mother barely slept. The rest of the world tucked itself into bed each night while she lay awake — tethered by love, anxiety, and the irreconcilable difference of twelve time zones. I was on the other side of the world, chasing ambition, freedom, and all the promises that lie in American ZIP codes. And she was back home in India, curled beside a phone that never left her side.
I never asked her to stay up. But she couldn’t help it. That’s what mothers do: they keep vigil.
She worried about things I had stopped worrying about long ago: Did I eat well? Did I drink my milk before heading out? What if I had a migraine? Who was reminding me to take my vitamins? Who was making sure I got home safely while the world around her was just waking up?
