My mother is a poem
I'll never be able to write
though everything I write
is a poem to my mother....
........poetic lines from Sharon Doubiago but which I could pick up as my own in its total metaphoric essence. To define a mother is, in fact, a challenge because of the diverse roles she plays. She has been identified as a beacon that lights up the future but at the same time reflected on the past in the guise of fond memories. Whether biological or surrogate, the mother had always been home..... or the bank where hurts and worries were deposited. This latter concept might even be a mirror-reflection of a child happily caught 'between a scream and a hug'! But on a more sentimental strain, "the best conversations with mothers always take place in silence, -when only it is the heart that speaks". Beautiful!
So the mother has always been idolized, deified, set on a pedestal of nothing but the labels of perfection. Talk about beauty, of patience, kindness, affection, understanding..... add to these selflessness and sacrifice - you name it! To none of these do I disagree, of course. I totally subscribe to the idea that a mother is all of the above - and more! Of the good things! It's just that I know of one mother who doesn't really reach up to all of these above.
This one mother, if I may talk about her, was one who lost hers long, long before she even became one...before she became a mother herself. Which is why, perhaps, maternal instincts on the caring side of it were ingrained in her at a tender age. And very strongly at that. Three younger brothers had to look up to her for the mother anchorage. Half siblings also came to the picture later but cousins too became part of her world to care for. And family was just so close.
In time came career and other career- related endeavors for this mother. As it turned out, her maternal instincts apparently could not be contained in her any longer as evidenced by a seemingly magnetic rapport that effortlessly radiated and extended also to both her students and her younger colleagues. So much so that when with her own children next, she tried to pour on them all - and if there could even be such a thing as more than all, she would have lavished on them this -more than all- that she could of her motherly love......as if to compensate... or maybe to fiercely counter the fact that she herself had been denied such motherly concerns she goes on missing... even as she hears about all these from others. I think.
Well, I just think so, really. But talk about the aspects lovingly given to mothers such as beauty and patience, affection and understanding - I give her minus points on these. This mother is so imperfect along these lines, you know! There are times when she is erratic - when she miscalculates, perhaps so much as to end up leaving such a thin line between sympathizing and empathizing! Oh yes, she scolds too, imagine that. An imperfect being demanding perfection? And what were those other aspects again....selflessness, sacrifice? But she is such an ambitious person, this mother. A lot of times will she assert her goals and consider these as other methods of a mother imparting education! Now that, I am not so sure about.
But let me tell you one thing I know for sure. The existence of this mother feeds on the subliminal fire of her motherhood. One evident reason for this was one other pain that rammed her heart the day of her first childbirth - a desolate feeling...a confirmation... that her fond wish for her own mother to be somewhere nearby at that special moment was at best inconceivable! This experience, however, has taught her to transition that frustration to be her strength in life as a mother....a mother imperfect, and a far cry, perhaps, from the perfection that was her mother. Flawed...fallacious....and imperfect, yes! Still, I would say, this mother is a mother! Hope you would , too? :)
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