Chapter One

The wind blowing on my face feels like sweet wine rushing down to my throat – and it tells me I’m ready to leave. But before I seek this long journey, I would like to savor the sweet drops of this wine parching my mouth and my chest after aging this for so long. My mother tells me that a wine becomes tastier as old as it ages – and with its taste comes together with its smell. The fresh ripe grapes harvested from its tree makes an aroma so rich it that all pirates who lived in this town never left the seats of our bars.

Oh, those pirates. They must have gotten so well to the minds of our town, M’ri Kassia. There’s an old legend going around in this town saying that if in your sleep, you see a pirate endlessly breaking the wine bottles in your wine cellar, it’s a good luck for your business. Because they’re there to consume your wine for as many as they want. Many have testified for it but many had said it false.

But if there is something M’ri Kassia believes, it is how my mom started her life in the business of wine-making. My mother leads this town for almost half of her life. She inherited the throne after the retirement of a trusted ruler before her. The ruler before her had no wife and no children but he has served as a father-figure to my mother. My mother was taught to make wine at a young age and they sold it to towns nearby that surrounded our place. When mother reached puberty, she gained the approval of the ruler to teach the other residents of our town to choose and crush the grape, to ferment, to age, and to place the wine in its fine bottles. At this point, she had been learning to manage wineries and make the best profit out of it. The profit the winery earned goes straight to the community treasure bank, where people reap the fruit of their hard work. When mother had been so well-taught to manage wineries, she grew to learn to draft laws, assemble crowds to speak to them, expand the community treasure, and enforce rules to preserve the town’s culture. The knowledge she gained had accumulated so well she was able to build schools so that she could share everything she learned from her seniors. She really had grown perpetually until the ruler had decided she is ready enough and it’s time for him to step down now.

Ever since then, my mother has not only become the leader of our town. She also became a teacher. And that kept the town going well.

Growing up under the custody of my mother, I saw her working through day and night. In the rise of the sun, the smell of the fried rice and bacon wafts through the room it wakes me up starving for it. The coffee flows through the cup smoothly that its sound alone stands caffeinated enough to wake you for the whole day. Then after breakfast, she leaves for the day and I keep waiting for a whole day. At the sunset, she reaches home but the day is not typically over yet.

I cook for dinner. I gather the ingredients just outside our house because we have sustained our own vegetation for years. We also have our own livestock a little far away from the vegetation as we don’t want contamination to poison us. I have learned to raise chickens, goats, and pigs. The helpers in our house do the botching of meat. I can’t bear to watch the blood squirt from the body of those poor animals. I wonder how the helpers in our house manage their stomach to feel numb ripping off the organs for food. After cleaning the meat, I usually work in the kitchen to do the cooking. I usually side a hot soup along with the main dish. Mom says that soup not only energizes the body but also the will. A hot, savory soup rushing through one’s body can mend mental distress and keeps somebody going for the remaining hours of the day.

Normally after dinner, I would notice that my mom’s day isn’t over yet. She reads through piles of paperwork for hours and hours beside a small gas lamp. She has her eyes looking through at those piles of works she reading and I would usually do yawning for her just seeing it. She has no time to yawn while the people in this town have had their body rested over their beds. An hour before the midnight, she starts to compile the handwritten papers in her own bag and place her fountain pens neatly at the side of her work table. She then blows her gas lamp a good night and goes straight to our kitchen, reaching for a wineglass and a bottle of freshly opened bottle of alcohol.

“Mom, you are drinking again,” I asked.

“It helps me rest, Reeve,” She said.

“Well, mom, you can just go to your bed.”

“I’ve done it if I can do so.”

“You can’t be drinking every night and ask alcohol to sing you a lullaby, mom.”

Every weekend, my mom will just be sleeping for the day. She would eat the food I cooked for breakfast at noon. I wonder is it how supposed the lives of good leaders be? Is it the cost of being a genuinely caring ruler of a land? To sleep at the total wake of the moon at the company of a wine bottle? The years mother had dedicated seemed to have sprouted well in the lives of M’ri Kassia. But I guess this must be the cost people have no reason to turn their backs on her.

After eating her meal, she would ask me to dress up so I could accompany her to town. Unlike the regular days of the month, my mother would not be as energetic as typically is. She still drinks her well-brewed coffee but it takes her longer to finish a single cup of it. She would sit in the bench at the terrace of our house, staring at the crown of the wavy trees being blown by the hot wind in the afternoon. She is just there sitting without combing her hair at least. If you would sit beside her, you would hardly notice her eyes blinking. She is just literally staring in front of our heavily-filled garden like she is in front of nothingness. Minutes would pass and she would notice that her coffee has dropped cold on its own. She would shock herself then with the amount of time has passed and immediately drink the cold coffee in a single gulp. Weekends must be different for her.

At this point, I would carefully interfere.

“Mom, I have already hanged your bath towels in the bathroom,” I endearingly say.

“Oh. I’ll bring this to the sink and get this cleaned,” she responds while holding her empty cup of coffee.

“It’s on me, mom. Just go to the shower and I’ll take care of it. The Habi must be waiting for you.”

We call our town healers the Habi. They specialize in all form of medicine, mending the pains both of the physique and mind. The Habi have dedicated their lives through the service of medicine as our town believes they are ordained by the gods to heal all sorts of pain a human can feel. A man can be gain greatness in its own lifetime but it would certainly need the Habi to link himself to the journey he is supposed to travel. Because a man will never be free of pain, even if he chose to move forward. But sometimes, I wonder who mends a Habi. When a Habi is in the crying for pain, do gods extend their mercy for a weeping Habi? If gods have called the Habi to serve its lifetime cause, then gods must be preparing the Habi a special place in their lair to rest with. How would the town of M’ri Kassia be if it was not the Habi who sustained the people and my mom.

In the house of the Habi, my mom would be welcomed equal to the people who visit it. But to be fair, my mom actually deems herself equal to everyone living human seeking relief in this place. In the corner of a room, there is a kid crying of fever. She is being handled by her parents asking the Habi what they can do so she will feel better. The Habi asks the parents to never leave sight of her and keep her drinking the herbal tea she will prescribe so in a few days she will feel better. The family thanks the Habi and proceeds to leave the house of the Habi. In another corner, a woman is rushed to another Habi complaining of the pain of birth. The Habi takes her to a room they prepared for a women who give birth to the society. The Habi asks the woman to continuously blow air through her mouth so the pain would not pierce through her body while the baby is being pushed out of her body. The Habi ask guidance to the gods.

We proceed to the Habi my mom has always visited. The Habi Superior is there – standing straight with a look of a tiger in its eye, commanding every single Habi of the house. The Habi Superior has aged her hair has turned gray and her skin has wrinkled but never the wisdom and power she holds within. She is a fine wine that gets better through time. The Habi Superior has always fascinated my mom that never a single chance the Habi Superior lost the glitter on her eyes. Has she always been this way? A lifetime of service must have pinched her for rest. As humans age, they are a step closer to heightened vulnerability. But how a woman who has faced illness and deaths in front of her eyes never run out of youthful glow?

“Have you been sleeping well,” the Habi Superior asks as she offers us green tea.

Mother tries to speak but not a sound comes out of her mouth. She just blankly stares at the smoke from arising from the cup tea in front of her. She straightens her back and tries to keep herself composed. It has always been this way.

“I can see that your body speaks the language for you. When words don’t come out of our mouth, our body tells it for us.”

I patiently sit with my mother as the Habi Superior tries to knit the unwoven thread of thoughts my mother has in her mind. The Habi Superior spends the first half of the hour asking questions and my mother tries to answer with her full strength. Little by little, the sweat wetting my mom’s hairline starts to run dry and her voice starts to utter more words as the session goes by.

“Every day, I come home trying to turn off the thoughts I had for the day. I just don’t understand… I try hard not to think of anything but my mind has been so used to it. It feels like the more I rest, the more tireless I become,” mother confesses.

“And why do you think that happens,” the Habi Superior asks.

“I just don’t know, it feels like something worse is bound to happen,” mother mutters.

“And what makes you think everything turns out for the worse?”

“The pirates.”

“But nothing bad had transpired yet and the pirates have been gone for so long. What makes you think they’re coming back?”

Mother strangles for air as her tears travel down to her cheeks. I sit uneasily in front of my mother but Habi Superior tells to keep my calm so mother could go back to the present. She tries to pat my mother’s hair to calm her down. She softly tells, “When I breathe in, you breathe as softly and gently as you can. And when I breathe out, gradually release the air filling your lungs.”

Habi Superior inhales air in the tempo of swaying trees in a fine weather and mother follows her so. “Now, let’s exhale all of that air out of your body.” And they release the air like tea being poured out from its pot. They repeatedly breathed for a couple of minutes and finally, the storm in my mother’s mind has finally subsided.

She pours my mother’s empty cup of tea once more.

“Remember that your worries won’t touch you. If it bothers you again, remember to stay in the present because worries orient to the future,” the Habi Superior tells mom. “You are not alone in this.”

I bring my mother outside so she can breathe fresh air. I head to the house’s treasure to pay them for the service they offered. Habi Superior rushes to me for a few reminders.

“Reeve, your mother needs you more than ever. Please remain as her companion.”

A cold air engulfs from my head to my feet. “Yes, Habi. I’ll keep an eye on mother.”

I assist mom to our chariot so we can head home. It bothers me to think that I just sat the whole time during the session but I feel extremely exhausted. Maybe, everything that took place earlier got into my sanity. But like I promised Habi Superior, I should always stay beside mom nonetheless.

I have always seen mom as the strong woman as she had been. Strong to me meant being able to stand firm to your foot, never to collapse. But in the amount of years me and my mom spent going to the house of Habi – seeing her gasp for air like the world has run out of it – my idea of it had started to wander around.

I look at my mother’s face so I could see what runs in her mind. I can tell that she is deeply worried but just looking through the lens of her eyes will never be enough to actually feel the struggle mom faces each minute of her life. She pats her head to my shoulders and I can tell she has quickly fallen asleep. This day must have been too long for her.

The day draws into a dark night and I can see mom lying on her bed peacefully. I mumble to myself, “at least she does not have to drink wine tonight.” I close the door while thinking to myself that the next day will arrive and she will have to muster again the strength she carries from our home to the town hall.  

The parting words the Habi Superior carried me earlier still resonates to me. I worry I may not be a companion to my mother in the coming weeks. My mom has fallen weak to her knees and soon I will have to step up to take the place for her – to travel the farther distance like mom has travelled for this town. Soon when she walks away from her seat, I will take over her place and be the ruler of this land.

And I wonder, “Will I be as disquieted like that?” Mother has spoken endlessly of those pirates and the tragedy they’ve brought in this town. If mother couldn’t take it all, then I must inherit the war she prepares to wage with her soldiers and her own mind.

But as a son of an incredible woman, I feel bad to worry if I will be able to stay true beside her. My mom’s time is running out and soon, I will be the one to war with the fear mom has fought against almost her whole life. This town needs me.

So do my mother.

I sit in the counter of our kitchen and reach for a wineglass. I pour a sweet wine into it and let the bittersweet wine pierce through my throat. And it tells me I am not ready yet to leave.