Saturday was supposed to be the day I could sleep a little longer, but my son had clearly never received that information. At 6:43 in the morning, while I was still dreaming about something that had every chance of being more pleasant than reality, I felt a small hand touching my cheek.
“Mommy, are you awake?”
I opened one eye and looked at the clock on my bedside table. For a few seconds, I tried to convince myself that I had read the time incorrectly.
“No, sweetheart. I’m still sleeping.”
“But you’re talking.”
“I talk in my sleep.”
He remained silent for a moment, probably trying to understand how such an extraordinary phenomenon was possible, then climbed into bed and settled beside me.
“I’m hungry.”
I sighed and rolled onto my back. Before becoming a mother, I had imagined that weekend mornings would mean drinking coffee in peace, listening to soft music, and enjoying a few hours without having to rush anywhere. Now, the ultimate luxury was being able to use the bathroom alone without hearing a small voice on the other side of the door asking what I was doing.
“What would you like for breakfast?” I asked.
“Pancakes.”
“All right. We’ll make pancakes.”
“With chocolate.”
“With chocolate.”
“And bananas.”
“And bananas.”
He looked satisfied, then added:
“But I only want the bananas.”
I stared at him and started laughing. It was far too early to negotiate with someone who had already managed to turn breakfast into a project that made absolutely no sense.
We got out of bed, and I went straight to the kitchen, where I switched on the coffee machine before doing anything else. There were things I was willing to compromise on, but my morning coffee was not one of them.
While I prepared breakfast, my son sat at the table and began telling me about a dream involving a dinosaur driving a police car. I listened with interest, trying not to think about the frying pan I would have to wash, the kitchen I would need to clean, and the clothes I still had to prepare for the afternoon.
I was meeting a friend for coffee.
I had accepted the invitation a few days earlier, during a moment when I had decided that I needed to start doing things for myself again. Now, looking at the list of chores waiting for me, I was beginning to understand why postponing such outings had become so easy.
Still, I wasn’t going to change my mind.
—
Around lunchtime, my mother came to pick up my little boy for a few hours. I had already prepared his clothes, a bottle of water, and a backpack in which he had insisted on packing three toy cars, a teddy bear, and a stone he had found the previous day.
“Why are you taking the stone?” I asked.
“Because it’s mine.”
There was no arguing with that logic.
My mother stepped inside, glanced at the backpack by the door, and then looked at me.
“Have you eaten?”
I smiled.
“Hello to you too, Mom.”
“I asked you a question.”
“Yes, I’ve eaten.”
“What?”
I thought for a moment.
“Pancakes.”
“How many?”
“Mom, I’m thirty-two years old.”
“And?”
I couldn’t think of a suitable response, so I changed the subject. My mother had an extraordinary talent for turning any conversation into a detailed investigation of my eating habits, regardless of my age or how well I managed every other aspect of my life.
After they left, I stood alone in the middle of the living room.
The silence surprised me.
There were no toys hitting the floor, no cartoons playing in the background, and no little voice asking me for something. For the first time that week, nobody needed me for the next few minutes.
I looked around and immediately felt the urge to start cleaning.
I picked up a toy from the carpet, then stopped.
I remembered what I had written in my notebook.
Do something just for myself.
I put the toy back down and went to get ready.
—
The café was fairly crowded when I arrived. Gentle afternoon light streamed through the large windows, while the smell of freshly brewed coffee mingled with the subtle perfume of people passing between the tables.
My friend was already waiting by the window, holding her phone in one hand, an almost empty cup sitting in front of her.
“Finally!” she exclaimed when she saw me. “I was starting to think I’d need to book an appointment two months in advance just to see you.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“The last time I invited you for coffee, you told me you had to wash your curtains.”
I sat down and started laughing.
“I really did have to wash them.”
“Of course. A national emergency.”
I ordered a cappuccino, and we began talking about ordinary things. Work, people we both knew, ridiculous situations, and the strange way time seemed to pass faster with every year. My friend had a talent for turning almost anything into a funny story, and within twenty minutes my stomach was already hurting from laughing.
It was a feeling I had almost forgotten.
Laughing without feeling guilty.
Being somewhere without rushing.
Listening to a story without mentally reviewing everything I still needed to do afterward.
“See?” she said, noticing my smile. “You still remember how to have fun.”
“I wasn’t entirely sure.”
“I was. We just need to rescue you from your dishes and responsibilities more often.”
I raised my cup.
“For that, I’d probably need to hire an assistant.”
“Or learn to leave the dishes in the sink occasionally.”
I made a face.
“Don’t be ridiculous. There are limits.”
We both burst out laughing.
—
After a while, the conversation grew quieter. My friend rested her elbows on the table and looked at me carefully.
“Now tell me how you’re really doing.”
I lowered my eyes to my cup.
“I’m fine.”
“That’s not what I asked. I don’t want the answer you give people at work.”
I smiled faintly. She knew me well enough not to accept the responses I offered out of habit.
“I’m better than I was a few weeks ago,” I admitted. “But I still have moments when I go back to everything that happened.”
She didn’t interrupt, giving me space to continue.
“Sometimes I feel like I’ve accepted the situation. I get on with my life, go to work, take care of my son, and manage to enjoy things. Then a song comes on, or I remember some tiny detail, and suddenly it feels like I’m right back where I started.”
“Do you still miss that person?”
I looked out the window, where several people were hurrying across the street.
“Yes. Very much.”
There was no reason to lie. My friend already knew enough about that summer, about the excitement with which I had talked about it at the beginning, and about the confusion that had followed.
“And what would you like to happen?”
I thought for a moment.
“I’d like to know what it all means. I don’t necessarily need promises. I just want an honest conversation where I don’t have to guess what the other person is feeling.”
“Have you said that?”
“I’ve tried.”
“And?”
I shrugged.
“I didn’t get the answers I needed.”
My friend slowly stirred her coffee before looking at me again.
“Sometimes, not getting an answer tells you something too.”
Her words stung, although I knew she wasn’t trying to hurt me.
“I know that’s what you think.”
“I’m not saying there was nothing there. I know how happy you were, and I have no reason to believe you imagined everything. But I can see how much energy you’re spending trying to understand things nobody is explaining to you.”
I remained silent.
It was easy to accept that the past had been real. What was harder to accept was that the reality of that past offered no guarantees about the future.
“I don’t want to become cold,” I said after a while. “I don’t want to pretend I don’t care just so I can look strong.”
“Then don’t pretend.”
I looked up.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. You can love someone and still take care of yourself. You don’t have to choose between being honest about your feelings and respecting yourself.”
I looked at her and smiled.
“You’re starting to sound like my therapist.”
“Perfect. Then you owe me the session fee.”
I burst out laughing so loudly that two people at the next table turned toward us.
—
We stayed at the café for almost another hour. We talked about plans I had postponed, places I wanted to visit, and things I used to enjoy before my free time became an almost nonexistent resource.
At one point, my friend asked whether I was still writing.
“Sometimes,” I answered. “Mostly in the evenings, after my son falls asleep.”
“Why don’t you write more?”
“Because sometimes I’m too tired.”
“But you love it.”
“Very much.”
She smiled.
“Then maybe you should make more room for it.”
I remembered the notebooks I had started and abandoned, the ideas saved on my phone, and the stories I had built in my mind without ever managing to put them on paper. Writing had always been a way for me to understand things I couldn’t quite say out loud.
Sometimes it helped me make sense of my emotions. Other times, it simply made me feel that there was a place where I could be completely honest.
“Maybe I’ll start something new,” I said.
“About what?”
I looked at the empty cup in front of me.
“About life. About having responsibilities, being a mother, going to work, and trying to look normal while a thousand things are happening inside you.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Probably because it is.”
“And is it going to be a sad story?”
I considered the question.
“I don’t want it to be just sad. I want it to feel real. There should be funny moments, bad days, and beautiful ones too. Because that’s what life is like, isn’t it? We don’t suffer all the time, even if sometimes it feels that way.”
My friend smiled.
“Then write it.”
—
By the time we left the café, evening had fallen. The air was cold, and the lights from the shops reflected on the damp pavement. We walked together for a few minutes before saying goodbye, promising not to let so much time pass before meeting again.
On my way to the car, I checked my phone. There were a few messages from my mother and a photograph of my little boy, proudly standing beside something he had built out of colorful blocks.
I smiled and replied.
Then I noticed something.
For the first time in a long while, I hadn’t opened my phone hoping to find a particular message. I had checked it because I wanted to see what my son was doing.
It was a small difference, but I felt it.
I got into the car and drove home.
—
My little boy greeted me with such a complicated story about his day with Grandma that it took almost ten minutes to understand who had done what. My mother told me he’d eaten well, behaved himself for the most part, and somehow managed to scatter toys across nearly every room.
“That means he felt right at home,” I joked.
After my mother left, I prepared something light to eat, and we spent the rest of the evening together. My son insisted on showing me everything he had built, although some of his creations collapsed before I had the chance to admire them.
At bedtime, he asked where I had been.
“I went for coffee with a friend.”
“And me?”
“You were at Grandma’s.”
He thought about it for a moment.
“Next time, I’m coming for coffee too.”
“All right, sweetheart. But you’ll have juice.”
“No. I want coffee.”
“Coffee is for grown-ups.”
He looked at me very seriously.
“I’m big.”
I smiled and kissed his forehead.
“I know. You’re growing up far too quickly.”
He snuggled under his blanket, and a few minutes later, he was asleep.
—
Later that evening, I sat at the kitchen table with a notebook in front of me. The house was quiet, and a cup of tea beside me was slowly growing cold, probably destined to remain untouched.
I opened the notebook to the first page and stared at the blank paper for several minutes.
I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to write. I had too many thoughts, too many memories, and too many questions I still hadn’t found answers to. But for the first time in a long while, I didn’t feel the need to resolve everything before beginning.
I picked up my pen and wrote a few lines about my mornings, my son, my job, and the strange way I could sometimes laugh even on days when I felt sad.
Then I stopped and read what I had written.
There was nothing extraordinary about it. No spectacular event, no dramatic turning point, and no happy ending I could promise.
It was simply my life.
And for the first time, I thought that perhaps it deserved to be told.
I continued writing until my tea had gone completely cold and the clock had passed midnight. Every now and then, I paused to remember a detail or smile at something I had almost forgotten.
At one point, my phone lit up beside the notebook.
I glanced at the screen, but I didn’t rush to pick it up.
I finished my sentence first.
Only then did I check the notification.
It wasn’t the message I had been waiting for all that time. It was something unimportant, and after turning off the screen, I returned to my notebook without feeling the need to search for other signs.
It didn’t mean I had forgotten. It didn’t mean the longing had disappeared or that I had finally understood everything that had happened.
It simply meant that, for a few hours, my life hadn’t revolved around someone’s absence.
I had laughed with a friend, listened to my son’s stories, and started writing again.
Small things, perhaps insignificant to someone looking from the outside, but to me they carried a meaning I was only beginning to understand.
Before closing the notebook, I added one final sentence:
Maybe I don’t have to wait until it stops hurting before I start living again.
I stared at the words for a moment, then turned off the kitchen light.
For the first time in many evenings, I went to bed without promising myself that tomorrow I would be stronger, colder, or less sensitive.
I simply hoped to have a good day.
And if it wasn’t a good one, I hoped I would at least find a reason to smile.
End of Chapter III.
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