My Mother – the team player.
I grew up in the fifties with a very practical and extremely loving Mother. May she rest in peace, waiting up for me while I studied for school exams late into the night. She was too afraid to find me asleep on my book before the oil lamp burnt itself out. They had a name for her - our very own Florence Nightingale. She cared not only about me, but about each and every one in our village, both the young and the old. In a low and humble tone she would correct the erring child, and tend lovingly to a neighbour’s sick one. And on a cold night took a cup of hot soup to the elderly man who lived alone nearby. She loved and lived a simple life, and laughed along with us most of the time. I don’t remember my mom ever swearing or raising her voice.
My mother's best friends lived barely a wave or a stone’s throw away. I can imagine seeing her now, in a house dress, broom in one hand, dish-towel in the other, while Doris Day’s Que Sera Sera played on the radio. And Patti Page sang the Tennessee Waltz. For Mom, it was the hem in a dress, and a quilt she would stitch or a sweater she would knit, a replacement of a lost button on my school uniform, the missing lace on my shoes or lengthening of my shorts as I grew up almost by the week. It was a way of life, and a very good one for that matter back then, most of which I sure did take for granted. Re-fixing, renewing, replacing would not exist on the agenda of my future life calendar for sure. After all I thought I would be rich!
But then before I knew it, I completed my higher secondary studies. It was necessary that I left in search of a job in the city, far away from my hometown. I went on my annual work leave to see Mom (and Dad) and relived days of my youth for a month or two in their midst and the folks around me who seemed a little older now - and went back to work again after a great holiday. I remember later in that year my Mother died, and on that clear August night, when I received a telegram far away from home about her death. For the time I was struck with the pain, a void and loneliness in my little room, of learning that someone was not there any more. I had never felt lonelier and lost about love and care before, that Mom tenderly and lovingly gave; and which I took for so much for granted while growing up into a man.
Sometimes, what we care about most gets all used up without we knowing it and goes away...never to return. So...while we have ...it is best we love it.....and care for it.....and fix it when it's broken.....and heal it when it's sick.
This is true not only for Moms, but also for most of the good people around us - good old friends who were always there and those we have known for so long. We treasure the love of our loved ones because we love them and because they are worth it. Like a best friend that moved away - or a classmate we grew up with, or my neighbour that I used to play with, out in the hot sun in the fields, or soaking wet in the rain when I was a child and walked to school together.
For me all things old are not just nostalgia, remembrance or a mere reminiscence. They are just some things that made my life important and worth living, like people we know who are special...and so, we keep them close to our hearts and minds, not only because we remember them every now and then, but because we want to treasure them.
My Mom was one of the players in my team – she gave us love and played centre forward. So were my neighbours, school and class-mates and friends I met along the way through life.
My Mom was my best friend who I miss up to this day. She taught me all that I know and set an example living her own simple life and made my own worth living. Not a single day goes by without thoughts of her good values. She died young. I have outlived her so far by three years.
My kids haven't had the chance of seeing their paternal grandmother, but have been very fortunate to have a great, caring, doting, benevolent and loving Mom, just as perhaps my mother would have wished and prayed for them to have.
There must a lot of truth in the phrase then, that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Happy Mother's Day to the mother of my children. Hope you have a very enjoyable day.
~ Tony Fernandes ~
Listen to Daniel O'Donnell
Mother's Birthday Song
Lovely post Dad! Wish I got to meet her.
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