Well. She knows now what she has to do.  

She rarely calls him. Only for important family news. Usually emergencies. She waits for him to call at his dutiful, semi-regular intervals, when they conduct conversations stiff as old liturgies.

She is breathing hard.

He doesn’t acknowledge her when he picks up. Says instead, “Hell-o” (not “Hello, Mother, Hello, Mom.” She has learned not to expect that, but doesn’t stop hoping for it). He leans on the first syllable. It sounds to her both hearty and exasperated. Maybe she imagines the exasperation; maybe it’s just one of his mannerisms. Like that thin brittle voice, stretching out certain words…Fiiine…Yeeeesss. Mannerisms that Bob hates, that scare her because they’re so different from the way everyone else they know talks…that might mean he’s…and Bob wouldn’t have that, he’d say …but she doesn’t know….

“Hello,” she says. “It’s me.”

“Yes,” he says. And follows with his usual formula, “So how are you tonight?”

As if he didn’t know. Hadn’t seen her.

And she wonders, as she always does: is that the way he greets people at his college when they call? She saw him shaking hands, laughing, easy, even hugging, that night. People she didn’t know. People in his world.  

If she asks about that world—which she doesn’t any more—he’ll tell her oh same old, same old. Classes, papers, meetings. You know. Meaning: you don’t know.

Yet she does know he’s not so off-hand about his job. She’s heard comments, second-hand: Kids say he’s the best prof they ever had… brilliant, great teacher but really caring too. And he gets prizes for teaching. She doesn’t really know what they are, but she hears about them on the local news.

Her chest hurts. She says she’s fine and asks “How are you? “

“Fine,” he says, stretching it out, and then, “I was just going to call to let you know I’m off to India tomorrow.”

He always calls when he’s “off to” somewhere out of the country. The usual complications ruck her stomach: anxiety, obscure hurt …. “Oh, yes?” she says.

Where does he go in India? In Japan? In Greece? In all those foreign places? Who does he know there? Probably people who do the same things he does, writing and teaching; soft work, Bob calls it. Friends, or. . . .

You must be so proud of him, people say. She never knows what to answer. Laughs a little awkwardly, ducks her head. Of course she’s proud—of course she is. . . .

Except…it has taken him from them. Gotten him above himself. She knows Bob thinks that. Not that he ever talks about it. They don’t talk about their son much. Their only son. If there were grandchildren, then maybe. . . .

But he’s single.

She realizes she’s clutching the phone and not speaking. She says, “So…how long’ll you be gone?”

“Couple of weeks. Everything OK over there?”

Not “at home.” They’d lived here until he was in high school. Moved when Bob’s company promoted him to its branch down south. Well, promoted is what they told people, the family, their friends. Bob had turned silent, taut-lipped. Maybe that’s when things began to go wrong between them. . . .

No. She knows better. Their son couldn’t wait to get away to university. When he’d taken the teaching job at the college across the river from their old home, she’d had a brief hope that maybe. . . .

But now Bob’s retired and they’re back in the made-over farmhouse that’s been in his family for generations. Where he grew up. Where their son grew up. And he calls it “over there.”

“We’re good,” she says. “Your dad’s out in the garden now, watering, you know, what with all this heat and no rain, his plants’d wither up if he didn’t water most every night.”

“He’ll keep them living,” he says. “They wouldn’t dare not to.” She can’t read his tone. But he’s teasing, must be. And you don’t tease someone unless you like them. “Tell him hi,” he says.

She pictures Bob out there in the hot blue dusk, the green hose skinny as a clothesline in his big hands, age splattering them like flecks of dirt, joints knotted. Head beginning to lean forward from his spine, tortoise-fashion. But he’s still big, big and strong and—and his tomato plants are green…

Plants. Her son going to India and they talk about Bob and his tomato plants. When what she has to say…to know…

It comes before her suddenly, like a knife slash: the blue May evening, the crowded lecture hall, the brown and gold parquet squares of the dais where he stood behind the lectern, thin in jeans, white open-necked shirt, linen jacket (has he lost weight? Is he eating enough?), head bent over his notes and then raised, the overhead light licking shine from his hair (he wears it long now, down to his shoulders; Bob, with his steely ‘50s crew, hates that), and then looking up, smiling, the smile from his childhood, wide, sweet, energetic—and somehow intentional, offered to please. She looks at it often in the framed photo of him that she keeps in her top dresser drawer, his hair white-blond then, cut in a perfect bowl.

She’d gone on impulse, when she’d seen his lecture advertised on the local news, with the picture of him. The long hair scooped back from the high forehead, the fine-boned face, the eyes circled now in rimless professorial glasses. Cheeks planed of their round youth, so the nose inherited from her points straight, almost defiantly, out of the frame. And the smile. Suddenly, desperately, she wanted to see him, hear him be the self he’d made apart from them. She hadn’t told Bob. He wouldn’t have come. Wouldn’t have stopped her, only wrapped himself in thick tight silence.

At first she could notice only the gestures, the worrying, scary gestures, the long lean fingers spread, sometimes fluttering like birds’ wings, sometimes tensing in tight curls. The way…those people use their hands… But then something amazing happened. She’d been sure she wouldn’t understand a word he said. But she had: things that seemed important, that meant something to her, though there were a lot of big words and names she’d never heard of. His voice, deeper, more supple than the high twang on the phone, took her to places inside herself she’d never imagined were there. And not just for her. For all of them sitting there, eloquently silent, in that soft-lit lecture room. Oh, he was good. Good. She loved him fiercely, urgently, not because he was her son, not that bruising anxious love, but because he was a man doing work he believed in, took joy in. As Bob took joy in his gardening, as Bob had never done in his construction job. And she felt a new, sharp yearning for them to be connected, she and Bob and their son.

The applause sent tears pushing up her throat. It went on and on. In the front row his students whooped, whistled, and cheered. She watched how he listened to the follow-up questions, head tilted, eyes intent on the questioner. The light silvered a few strands in his long waving hair. Middle-aged, she thought with astonishment. He’s middle-aged. And beautiful.

When it was over she’d hesitated, half-resolving to go up to him, to say something.  

And that was when she heard it.

She didn’t sleep that night.

Now he’s waiting for her to tell him why she called. She can hear the question—maybe the impatience—in his silence. She draws a breath and says, “I was at your lecture the other night.”

He says, “I know.”

And when someone asked him who that woman in the back was, he said, “Helen O’Brien.” Not “my mother.” Helen O’Brien. How you’d describe an acquaintance.

Did he know she’d heard? Had he wanted that?

Had he thought—what had he thought? That she’d wish it—the detachment—because. . . .

She can’t ask.

She’s wrestled with it. Praying didn’t help. Or maybe it did. She knows she can only do the one thing. Say what she called to say. Pray now that it’s right.

She bites her lip hard. “You were—good,” she says. Shuffles into a little embarrassed laugh. “I—I even got it. Well, some of it. Most of it. It—made me feel things I never—thought I knew about.”

He doesn’t answer. She waits, as if for a birth or a death. Then finally he says, “Thank you.” His voice is different, deeper, softer. Like the voice of his lecture—only less controlled, less sure. It sounds… surprised.

She takes another breath. Says, almost defiantly, “And—and I was—proud.”

A heartbreak of silence. Then, the same different voice, “I’m glad.”

Neither speaks. After a while—it seems a long while—he clears his throat and says, “Well then. I’ll let you go now.” How he always ends their phone calls.

She always says “Take care” and when he’s going away, “have a nice trip.” But tonight she can’t.

He always cuts off quickly. But tonight he doesn’t. The silence between them feels to her as if it’s throbbing. Like an old wound, freshly touched. And then he says, “I could call you when I get back. If you’d like me to.”

She wonders how tears can feel like singing. One of those poets he talked about would probably know. “Yes. Yes please. I would.”

He says, “OK then. Well—so—”

She says, “Take care” and then, “Have a nice trip. Son.”

“I will,” he says. And leaves it hanging for a beat. “I will.” She hears what he is not saying.

He will say it next time. She knows.

At First Sight

 

Creative Writing Workshop-Tours in Oaxaca, Mexico

November 11–19, 2025, and January 20–28, 2026

with Donna Hanelin

  At First Sight is for all levels of writing experience. It combines touring and writing, and offers relaxed, focused time to write in the great state of Oaxaca. At First Sight will offer guidance for beginning writers and will help experienced writers to recharge and to develop new work. You’ll have time to write on your own and to learn more about writing in classes and discussions. We’ll take a look at how we approach and incorporate new sights, new people, new sensations. How much do you imagine? What do you want to know? What are the facts? What matters to you, at first sight? What do you want to see and what do you want to turn away from? Where is your story, your poem, in this new arrangement of shadow and sun? Donna Hanelin, published poet and writer, has been teaching creative writing in northern California since 1988. She lives half the year in Oaxaca where she offers writing workshops and hosts a weekly open mic. Donna fell in love with Oaxaca at first sight and even as they both age, remains loyal to her first impression.

All the Details: Email: oaxacawritingtours@icloud.com Phone: 530 955 5193 Download the flyer.

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