I folded my son’s hoodie and smelled outside on it

Dear Delyara, That smell always gets me. Cold air, school corridor, cheap deodorant, pencil dust, and some part of a day I wasn’t there for. He came home, said very little, ate quickly, disappeared upstairs, and looked like any other boy trying to grow away from his mother in small ordinary steps. Then later I stood folding his hoodie and suddenly felt how much of motherhood now is touching the edges of a child’s life instead of standing in the centre of it. The clothes. The lunchbox. The bag. The washed plate. The note from school. The face at pickup. The rest is private now in ways that hurt and make sense at the same time. I folded the hoodie slowly. I think I was really folding time.