Mom and son, incest stories, separation makes the heart grow fonder, I was waiting impatiently at the airport for the plane to arrive. We had already passed the time when plane was due and now every passing second seemed like an hour. I didn’t care what the reason for the delay was; I wanted that plane to be on the ground. I had waited over two years to see my son and now that he was supposed to be here, in my arms, I couldn’t wait any longer. I was longing to see his sweet face and to kiss his beautiful cheeks. I wanted to hug him as hard as possible and to hold him against me to make up for all the time that he was away, studying on the other side of the country. I was very upset with the pilot for delaying my reunion with my son.
As I stared at the arrivals and departures notice board, I tried to picture what he would look like after such a long time. I figured he must have shot up quite high and hopefully filled in a bit. I wondered about any of the changes in him as a result of becoming a man. I wondered about his personality, how it must have developed after being away from home for so long.
I jumped up as the notice board changed to indicate that his flight had landed. I moved to the glass wall looking out onto the runaway and could see in a distance his plane taxiing towards the passageway that would eventually bring him out in front of me. I couldn’t wait.
I had to wait though, for a long time again because it took what felt like hours for the inept crew of the airline to bring the plane in and disembark all the passengers. I moved to the front of the crowd waiting for their loved ones to come and anxiously waited for my son to step out from behind the corner and come into my arms.
Passengers started to come out slowly at first and then in one long line. I was almost beside myself getting more impatient by the second. I scrutinized every male face for those familiar features and each one I saw turned out to be someone else’s son. As the last of the passengers came through and there was no one else coming, panic took over my brain. Where was he? What happened? Did he miss the plane? Did something happen to him? When I saw the airline crew closing their counter, I decided to run to them and ask them to check their computers or something. I wanted to know what happened to my son.
As I turned, I ran smack into a large man towering over me. I became furious as I lost my balance and almost fell backwards. He reached out and grabbed me by my waist. He said, “Are you okay, mom?”
“Son,” I screamed, “Oh my God, it’s you!”
“Yes, mom, it’s me.” The little moustache on his lips spread wide as he gave me a huge smile.
“Son, look at you…” I was still screaming as I hugged him tight, “…you look so different I didn’t even recognize you.”
“Yes, I know.” He was grinning from ear to ear. He had cut his hair short and his ears were quite visible. He looked handsome as ever and as kissable as the day I brought him home from the hospital.
“You have grown…” I felt around his shoulders, his arms and even his stomach. “You have grown a lot.” I smothered him again and gave him a ton of kisses on his cheeks and his forehead, which he had to lower quite a bit to let me reach it. Then I started crying.
“What’s the matter, mom. Why the tears? Aren’t you happy to see me?”
“I am son, I am. But, I have missed so much of your growing up that I suddenly feel I was deprived of the best years of your life.”
“The best years are yet to come, mom, what with college and all.” He sounded so mature. “And I promise you’ll share them with me as much as possible because I have decided to go to a college here instead of the other part of the country.”
I smiled and hugged him hard. I then kissed him lightly on the lips and said, “I hope so, but for now, let’s get you home.”
“Yes, home.” He repeated as we started moving towards the parking lot.
I was happy. I couldn’t get enough of him. I kept touching his hand and his arm on the drive to our house. He was also happy as I could tell from the way he held my hand on occasion and squeezed it, or the way he pressed my shoulders as I tried to get home as fast as possible. The maid had instructions to get his room ready and to get the meal on the table the minute she saw my car pulling into the driveway.
His father, his sisters and our faithful maid, Juliah, were all waiting outside the house and charged him the minute my car stopped. After all the commotion died out, he went to Juliah and greeted her with so much respect that I couldn’t help but feel proud of the way he had turned out. Juliah cried as she held my hand and exclaimed how grown up he was. She said she remembered the day he used to run around in the yard giving her hard time and now he was probably the handsomest man she had ever laid her eyes on. I laughed as I gave her a hug.
He was tired so he went to his room after the meal and his sisters went with him. It took them a while to leave but they promised to come again next day to spend time with him. His father told him how happy he was to have him back with us for a while and how proud he was that his son had completed his school so well and had grown up to be such a nice young man.
I went to his room to make sure everything was okay and found him deep asleep still in his travel clothes. As he lay there like an angel that he was, I realized that I had lost my son forever. This man was not my son, he didn’t look like my son, he was some stranger. I sat next to him as I held his hand in mine and brought it to my chest and held it there with all the affection that I felt. I touched his face, I ran my fingers through his hair, I even caressed his back the way I used to do so many years ago. I had missed him and I cursed the day I had let my husband decide to send him so far away, “to build character”, as he so smugly had put.
I consoled myself by saying that now he was back and now he was with me, that now he was mine. He was so deep asleep he didn’t even realize that I was feeling him. It took me a while to leave the room and settle down.
I was up early the next morning, giving instructions about his breakfast, how it should be served, where it should be served and so on. I had heard the shower and knew that he was up early as well and that he’ll be out with me shortly. His father was going to work soon and his sisters probably wouldn’t show up for another three or four hours, so I decided that I was going to monopolize his time, to make up for the time we had lost, so to speak.
He was bright and perky, dressed in crisp clothes that Juliah had taken very special care to iron. His hair was still wet and he had combed them back nicely, a rather fresh departure from his schoolboy appearance of a few years back. His moustache was gone, though. I asked him what happened and he told me that he only had it to fool me on our first meeting. He didn’t really like to have one.
With the moustache gone, he looked somewhat like my son, even though many of his features were lost forever. That Adam’s apple was prominent, those shoulders were a lot more muscular, his face was more serious with his eyes set deeper than I remembered and his lips more chiselled. Gone was that boyish, naughty, playful smile and in its place was this deep, mysterious silence; an attractive feature in a man, but not in my son. I was having trouble putting the two together into one, as the reality was. I was only interested in mothering my child, not playing host to this newcomer.
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