She carefully took her green cloth-bag out of her leather purse. The bag was interesting. It was simple and soft. It could bend and it could fit anywhere if it was empty. But it was not. It contained something special—very special. The simple green bag had this strange power that made my mother do strange things.

 The last time I saw it was when she was telling me about her achievements. She was happy as her uncountable possessions came out of that green cloth bag. She removed her ever-so-valuable old, gold chain. She smiled and she told me about her savings. I joked with her and asked her in a very assertive way that after all, everything in the green bag belonged to me. She chuckled and perhaps laughed at my pretentious naïveté. She told me that she couldn’t give all of it to me but I would have to share it with my sister. I felt a pang of jealousy run through me even though I knew she would say this. Perhaps, just the fact that she explicitly told me what I was expecting, made me feel strange. Now that I think of it, I don’t know if it was even jealousy. The reason I think this incident was strange is because of the incident that follows.

This time, she was crying. (She pretended that she wasn’t crying but her white-on-red eyeballs forced her to shut up.) Her achievements didn’t seem to pride her. Her leather purse was just an outside, superficial mask that she carried around. It looked tough and rich. Inside, though, rested the true riches. The treasure in her green bag was what was truly worth eyeing. The bag was soft and simple—almost poor looking. There was a failed attempt to make the bag look stylish by giving it some kind of frills at the bottom. However, the simplicity of the bag was inevitable. This seemed like the truth. The green cloth bag was the truth. She held the bag in her small hands and tried to keep it back where it belonged. Before she kept it in its actual place, I was asked to leave.

I wondered if I’ll ever own that green cloth-bag, my green cloth-bag.

She made terrible mistakes; sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously. Her biggest mistake was that she was stubborn. Now, that caused her to be argumentative or inexpressive. She was born a baby, just like everybody else, and would cry if she was hungry, angry or sad. Then suddenly something happened and under the influence of the culture that honors sacrifices, she was taught to contain herself. Her facial features such as her bloodshot eyes or her silent frown or a massive flow of tears from her eyes would give away her hunger, anger or glum. Over the course of a few years, she rapidly moved up the ladder of maturity. She started to believe that some things are better unsaid [completely contrary to the argumentative nature that was building up in her]. She realized that she ran away from relationships and emotions. Something definitely bothered her about them. As though she just needed someone to confirm it, she was told that. How many people are you going to avoid? If need be, she answered, everyone. There was something that made her appear callous in regard to emotions of other people, and their requests to ‘just say it’. Calculations. ‘Look before you leap.’ Think.

Yet, she made terrible mistakes. Unfortunately her obstinacy was reinforced because of her terrible mistakes she made. She thought that people would not comprehend her even if she expressed herself; those who are worth it, will understand without those explanations. She was proved wrong. There are some people who are worth it [‘it’ being an abstraction of a kind that refers to nothing in particular] but still don’t understand. What do you do then? Do you let them be and decide that they are not worth it? But then, you just said that they are worth it. Toss and toss; the ball seemed to go from one court to the other in a fraction of a millisecond. [I wonder how her thought process could formulate such thoughts in this little time. Perhaps, the neurons spark in different areas of the brain that multitasks.]  Her hand stopped and grew stiff when she had to console someone. She also wonders why it is easy with some people she does not care about, or if she cares about them, there is a different feeling. Because of this stubbornness of hers, because of the consequential argumentative and inexpressive nature of hers, she made mistakes, terrible mistakes.