(Inspired in the painting by German artist Kaethe Butcher’s “A Hug in the Garden”)
I have a painting of two figures hugging. The figure on the left has long black hair and a gray dress covered in red poppies. Her face is hidden in the embrace. The figure on the right has long white-ish hair and a gray dress covered in dandelions and yellow flowers with straight short petals. Her hand embracing the other figure looks withered. We can see her pale forehead, dark eyebrows, and a peek of her right eyelid. Four years ago, an interior designer told me to only buy a painting if I was happy to see it every single day. These two figures live in my living room, framed in white.
The flowers come out from their dresses like vapor rising from boiling water. Sometimes I think the figure with white-ish hair is the other’s past self. That the figure with black hair is hugging the person she used to be. I stand there holding a morning cup of coffee, thinking about whether my thirteen-year-old self would hug me. If she’d instinctively know it’s me. If she’d like my apartment. If I’d be protective over her. I wonder if my mother’s thirty-year-old self would hug me. If we’d be friends. If she’d walk my dog with me. If she’d like the books I read.
Sometimes the figure on the left looks like a long-lost friend, and I feel like hugging her too. I feel like giving her flowers. Dandelions are floating in the space above the figures’ heads. I wonder if they made a wish. If so, did they wish for the same thing? I wish I could get to hug the people I thought would never leave my life. The people that life danced away from me, slowly. I think of Renata on the last day of school when our parents picked us up to take us home to our respective countries. We were in this ballroom with wide mirrors and white, round tables. I was talking to someone when I heard my name. I turned around and saw Renata following her parents, waving goodbye to me. I froze and waved back. We smiled. That’s the last time I saw her. I think of Lovesang, a friend from school. One day he didn’t show up, and a week later, my mother told me that his family moved back to Spain. My mother lost the little piece of paper with his mother’s phone number. That was it.
I’ve asked my friends what they think of the two figures hugging, and none of us have a clear answer. Some think that the figure with the wrinkly hand is dead, others think they are mother and daughter, and others think they are two sisters reunited after years apart. To me, the figure on the right isn’t dead, but sometimes she seems to be otherworldy as if living between wherever our world is and a world the living humans I know, can’t access yet. Somewhere where our childhood memories are stored; or the secrets we had when we were little are kept; somewhere that feels like a déjà vu. The embrace is what anchors her to the other figure and this world.
In Mexican culture, we believe that our deceased loved ones come to visit us once a year. I believe that my grandma has hugged me before. If the two figures are a mother and a daughter, to me it’s clear that they’re hugging goodbye since my mother and I have hugged goodbye at multiple airports and boarding schools. If the two figures are sisters, I wish I could hug the younger sister I almost had, gently between my hands.
Some think the figure with black hair is actually a man hugging his true self. In this scenario, it took a lifetime for the figure with the old-looking hand to finally be at peace with himself. Others think this figure is a boy who’d finally been reunited with his mother. The boy’s hair is long because of all the years he was kept away somewhere. The other figure’s hair is white-ish and long to symbolize the many years she suffered in his absence. I wonder what it would feel like to hug someone with such force and relief that you wouldn’t even notice that the flowers on your dress have come to life.
Stories from The Moon / Cuentos de la Luna 
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