ORIMERAYour Mother Waits Too
She keeps the phone beside her plate and says she is fine. Then listens for the gate. The narrator knows that gesture; he recognises it in another window too.
Original lyrics and translation
Read the English original, the Spanish translation, or both texts stanza by stanza.
Notes on the translation
Each mother waits in her own home; the translation avoids suggesting that both watch a single door.
The narrator’s fear is preserved too: hearing footsteps could ease his own fear.
The translation accompanies the original lyrics, preserves their stanzas and is not adapted for singing.
The light in the other house
Editorial reading
His mother leaves the hallway light on later each night. She keeps the phone nearby and listens for an entrance that has not yet opened. She says she is fine. Her son knows the waiting that continues after that sentence and shares the fear she tries to contain.
He had thought that fear belonged to them. Then he sees the other mother beside a curtain: a cold cup, a sleepless face, hands wrapped in a sweater. He recognises these gestures from his own house. The distance between sides meets a resemblance he had not expected.
The questions in the bridge return to what they were taught. What were those mothers told about the other son? Were they told that he was afraid too, that he called home? Behind each warning was a person someone was still waiting for.
At the end, two lights remain on. The chorus brings no one home. From now on, when the narrator thinks of the other person, he will also have to think of the person who wants them to return.
Who fear reaches
A person’s life reaches out towards those waiting for news of them. The song looks at that bond through two mothers, each in her own house, each waiting for an arrival.
Recognition preserves what is particular to each of them. It happens as the narrator identifies something in another window that he knows from his own: care held in a waiting it cannot control.
Who does fear reach when someone is late coming home?
After the song
Both lights are still on. Neither wait has ended within the song.