chung
The suitcase that got twice as heavy
September 2, 2026
Eleven at night. Everyone else in the house was already asleep. In the kitchen there was one bare bulb and the sound of plastic bags being folded over.
In the morning she would get on the bus back to the city. And her mother was still sitting there, packing.
She did try to stop her. Said it's too much, it's heavy, they sell all of this in the city. Her mother just said mm, and kept packing. It was only when her mother said "they don't have this out there" that she realised she was arguing with the wrong thing. Her mother wasn't packing food — she was packing the things she could still make with her own hands. A tub of shredded pork, a bottle of fish sauce with a handwritten label, a basket of greens with the soil still on them. You can't buy the things somebody makes for you. In the end she pulled over the second plastic stool, sat down, and packed alongside her.
She had come home with one small bag. She left with two suitcases, nearly twice the weight. At the station, the food bag wouldn't fit in the luggage compartment — it just kept sticking out, no matter how she angled it. Only later did she learn her mother had got up at four in the morning to cook more, after she'd gone to bed. That weight wasn't food. It was the hours her mother stayed awake. So she stopped trying to make it fit, and held the bag on her lap instead.
A while into the drive she opened the bag to look. Wedged between the packed containers were a white envelope and a note folded in half, in the slanted handwriting of someone who doesn't write much: eat properly, come home next month. That money wasn't for food. It was for the trip back. Her mother wasn't asking her for anything — she was paying in advance for one more visit. She turned her face to the window, then took out her phone and typed: I'll be home next month.
She couldn't say that she missed her. So she wrote down a date instead.
Some people love you by fitting one more container into a bag that's already full. When was the last time you told your mother it was too much?