Let me tell you a fairytale, except there is no fairy here (it’s even better) and it is not much of a tale. I’ll tell you about a lady. My lady.

My lady doesn’t wear makeup. Surprised, aren’t you? She likes, wants, to stay simple instead. he kind that goes without the hashtags: NoMakeup, NoFilter, and WokeUpLikeThis. She is beautiful and she doesn’t even know that, probably because she never had time to think about her prettiness.

Every morning, when the birds are the only creatures fully awake, the stairs of the house are graced by her presence. With a hand under her chin, she’s staring outside and thinking… about what? You’ll never know. It’s not a new thing for her. I seriously doubt if she is even aware of this routine and that the stairs miss her if she skips a day or two, that her presence doesn’t go unnoticed. But she doesn’t care if you see her or not.

She doesn’t want anything from you. She's old but she'll always be young for you. She just sits back, like the producer of a blockbuster movie, or the composer of a chart-topper, performing her tasks to perfection, while the actors and singers take all the fame. She doesn’t even complain. She is so content seeing you move ahead.

Unlike every mother on the planet, she’ll never say that she loves you, rather she shows her love. Maybe words cannot do justice in this case. She’ll wake up at 3 am on a winter morning to make breakfast, just because she gets a hint that you’ll be leaving early today. She’ll count days if you’re gone for weeks, hours if you’re absent for days, and every single minute if you don’t show up when you should have. I sit 7,000 miles away from her, writing something she isn’t even aware of. I’m sure she’ll still be counting the days since I left.

Even if you don’t say you love her, even if you don’t mention it one single time you just cannot-not love this woman. She is that special.