My mother packed my school lunch on the morning I turned fifty

Dear Delyara, I turned fifty today and slept at my mother’s house because we had a family dinner last night. I had an early flight home, so I woke before sunrise and found a paper bag beside my suitcase. Inside was a cheese sandwich wrapped in foil, an apple, two biscuits, and a folded napkin. Mum had written my name on the bag in the same black marker she used when I was a child. For a few seconds, I was embarrassed. I am a managing director. I have two grown children. I travel constantly and can buy food at any airport. Then I noticed she had cut the crusts off the sandwich. I have not asked for that since I was eleven. Mum is seventy-nine now. Her hands shake when she pours tea, and she sometimes calls my daughter by my sister’s name. I went into her bedroom to thank her, but she was asleep with one hand outside the blanket. I stood there holding the lunch bag and suddenly remembered every school morning when she had been awake before me, making sandwiches while the rest of the house complained about being tired. On the plane, I ate everything, even the biscuits I do not like. The man beside me probably wondered why a fifty-year-old was crying over a crustless sandwich at eight in the morning.