Sounding astonished himself, he told me his mom travelled back from North America on her own. You mean you didn’t know, I asked. In fact, it was not clear to the rest of the family who would be travelling with her on the way back. Like, he said, with a lot of things in his family, the details are not always easy to come by.
It’s understandable when there is a period of adjustment following a long journey, all the more with time change. She appeared to be confused where she is when she has now returned, but in talking to her, he said it sounded like she acted as if she was at home when she was over in North America.
I asked him about the time she visited him for his graduation. They visited his university too. She suddenly asked him did you get sick when you were at uni? He said that was a very strange question. It’s quite likely a person will have some mild illness e.g. flu or cold over the period they study for a degree programme; change of place can also bring about some short-term illness. The answer to her question, he said, was “yes”, but he thought to himself how is that important? As she didn’t follow up with other questions, he also stopped thinking about it.
He looked at me and said ya, you looked worried and confused. He said he often finds it difficult to relate to his mom about place and time. Let’s say it takes 5 hours to travel by air to one place, it takes 15 hours to travel by air too another place. Logic would lead one to think the second place is probably at least 2 times further than the first, probably 3 times. He said mom does not seem to grasp this kind of thing.
