It’s strange how something as simple as soap can bring back memories.
The smell of clean laundry, the soft foam on tiny hands, the way my mother used to scrub the dirt off my knees after I fell—always gentle, but firm enough to make me remember that care could hurt a little, too.
She’s gone now. And yet, every time I wash my hands, I feel her there—in the warmth of the water, in the rhythm of the motion. There’s a quiet moment when the world stops, and I almost expect to hear her voice saying, “Don’t forget behind your ears.”
The word “mother” doesn’t have a substitute. You can replace friends, homes, even lovers—but not her. There’s no synonym for that mixture of protection and exhaustion, for love that never asks but always gives.
Sometimes, when I bathe my five-year-old son and my two-year-old daughter, I feel the same weight she must have carried. The same quiet fear that the world might hurt them, and the same hope that they’ll never notice how hard it is to keep it all together.
As the soap slides through my hands and I rinse the bubbles off their small fingers, I see her again—not as she was, but as she lives now, in me. In the way I tuck them in. In the way I worry. In the way I love.
Loss is strange. It leaves a hole that never closes, but sometimes that hole fills with light. A kind of warmth that says: You’re not alone. I’m still here.
So tonight, as I wash my hands, I whisper a quiet thank you—to the woman who taught me what love feels like, and to the little ones who remind me what it means to keep it alive.