A few days ago, my mom Skyped me – just to stare at me.

I mean, I’m totally cool with my mom looking at me – like I love the attention, but I needed to study for my Chemistry exam.

When I hung up with her, I felt really bad. This amazing woman who’s been raising me for 18 years, just called to look at me. Her exact words were, “I miss my Paula. I just wanted to see your face.”

I mean, I knew my family and friends were going to miss me as much as I was going to miss them, but my mom was the one who played it off the most. She joked that I needed to go far away, and that everyone would get along without me. But we both knew that wasn’t true.

Being away from home hasn’t been too hard for me. I’m used to being away for periods of time; sometimes I create that isolation. But being away from my mom is different.

Mother-child relations are very important. I mean all relationships are, but there’s a chemical and physical connection with newborns and their mothers. It obviously wears off as the child is introduced to other stimuli and people outside of the womb, so it becomes voluntary.

I’d like to believe that my mother and I have still been creating some kind of bond – solely by choice and not by womb-y chemicals. And I went ahead and broke that.

My mom could’ve called to talk to me, show me something, just about anything! But all she wanted was to look at me.

I haven’t seen my mom since July, and I won’t be able to see her until December. But when I do come home, I’ll let her stare at my face for as long as she wants to. And I’ll stare at hers too. I’ll put my heavy body in her lap and try to kiss her face until she shoos me away. I’ll try and be the baby she was once able to stare at again.