SLEEPTALKING

By Raoul Suarez

I heard her talking in her sleep again. It has always been like that since I’ve known her. I would listen to her mumble about the little things that bothered her, and I would just brush them all aside. I didn’t understand it then. I tried to. There are just these things that are too complicated to recognize even when it is staring at you straight in the face.

Maybe it was just pieces of something heavier than dreams should be. She talked about numbers most of the time. She would murmur about tuition fees like they were being counted over and over. She would mention the bills, the dues, the bank loans, and all these other things that sounded too real to belong in the night. Sometimes a sigh would follow. Deep. Tired. Restless. Even in her sleep, she hadn’t found a place to set things down.

She always knew what to do. She always made sure there was food, that uniforms were clean, and that everything somehow worked out. She moved through the day with a kind of quiet certainty that it felt like nothing could shake her. Whatever problems existed never seemed to reach us. At night, in those small and unguarded moments, I realized there was a world she entered that I couldn’t see.

I remember turning on my side, staring into the dark, and listening to all the things that worried her. There was something unsettling about it. Hearing her spill out responsibilities in whispers was like discovering that even her dreams weren’t her own. It seemed to me like they belonged to all the things she had to keep together.

When the morning would come, she would wake up like nothing had happened. No trace of the worries that filled the night. We only get to hear the same steady voice calling us to get ready. We only saw the same hands preparing everything we needed before we even asked. If she was tired, there were no traces. If things were difficult, it never showed. If she was crumbling, it never reached the surface.

As a child, I have always thought that was just how mothers were. Unshaken. Unbreakable. Unyielding. I have always believed that the world simply moved around her strength. She didn’t get tired the way we did, didn’t worry the way we did, and didn’t lie awake counting the things that might fall apart morning.

It never occurred to me that strength could be practiced. I had no inkling that composure could be chosen again and again even when it was difficult. She was a constant. Certain. Anchored. Centered. A fixed point in a world that didn’t always make sense.

What I heard in her sleep wasn’t weakness. It was the truth that was trying to slip through. Strength isn’t the absence of burden. It was a necessity. It wasn’t the absence of struggle. It was a calculated exercise in taking control. A decision to carry heavy loads, day after day, without letting it fall on the people you love.

She knew exactly how much she could hold, and she still chose to carry a little more. It was the quiet discipline of setting aside her own fears so ours would never grow too loud. It was the art of making things feel enough even when they weren’t. The strength that she lived by was never meant to be seen. Only felt. Only understood much later. Only visible when the silence she left behind finally began to speak.

I heard her talking in her sleep again. It has always been like that since I’ve known her. I would listen to her mumble about the little things that bothered her. All the sacrifices she has been silently carrying.  Full of everything she never said out loud. Everything she chose to fight alone. I didn’t understand it then. To me, she was just my mother. I understand it better now. Even in her sleep, she is still taking care of us.