My Three Mothers
Being a mother is something that’s meant to come naturally, though I figure it was nurtured into our DNA. A mother is defined as a woman in relation to a child, a female parent. Being a mother is so much more than the label the definitions suggests. A mother is born, a mother is taught, a mother is imprinted upon with the rights and responsibilities for her offspring with no bounds. I was gifted more than one of these women that bore the rights and responsibilities of shaping me and growing me and loving me like no other. This is a story of my three mothers. Nothing like becoming a mother myself to make me realize the blessings in abundance I have been given from having been gifted all the mothers in my life.
A sweet, gentle mannered woman with the softest eyes that smiled when she smiled, held me first as I took my first breaths being born of her loins. She loved me with care and strength of a powerful goddess. It wasn’t always her sweet loving that comes to remind me how to be a mother, it was the ferocity in which she had always defended me. I used to be on TV shows quite a bit as a child. I remember going to an audition once when I was about ten, accompanied by a friend of my mother’s. I did all the screen tests and then we gathered in a room where a producer walked in to inspect us. I was in the final five out of the sixty odd that auditioned that day. I was supposed to be on the show by that rationale. He came in, looked at each of the other children selected and said,”great.” Then he looked at me and my curly locks amess and said,”Find another one more presentable, not this one.”
I went home that day bummed I couldn’t be on the show. I begged my mother to talk to the producers so that I could be on the show with my friends who were selected. “What did they say? Maybe they were looking for a different personality or look for their character,” she said calmly because my mother, too, was a TV producer and director. “He said find another one more presentable, not this one,” I told her. She turned to me with fire in her eyes and I shrunk in my britches,”He said what? That bastard!” She grabbed me and we went back to the production studio where the auditions were held to be met by said producer and my mother unleashed the wrath of a thousand dragons onto him. She sent me into another room and I listened to the muffled vulgarities she flung at him for daring to say I was unpresentable.
Then she came out to get me and had a stern talking to me about the incident,”nobody says you’re unpresentable, do you understand? There’s nothing wrong with you. You can be too young, too old, too short, too tall, just not fit for a role, but I will not let anyone tell my daughter she is unpresentable. Do you understand? He was a bastard for saying that to my child. There is nothing wrong with you.” I sat in silence that day, still annoyed I couldn’t be on the show with my friends. But today, after having children of my own, I understood the largest lesson to be had from that whole fiasco. What I thought was an overreaction and a disservice to my wants was my mother fighting demons for me. She would not have me think I was lesser than. The world will tell me that but I was to fight all the assholes who thought me unpresentable, undesirable, unfit, not good enough. I was to know my worth always and she was going to fight every single time so I knew my worth. My mother was a force to be reckoned with, a badass. This amongst a million things I have watched her do over the years stuck and I am grateful for that day I was called unpresentable as on that day I learned also what it meant to be a mother.
Growing up, I was in a very tight knit family, where alloparenting was a norm, I had my aunts and uncles that parented me along with my biological parents. We were so close that parenting advice and life choices were consulted with my aunts and uncles. Of all my aunts, I had one that I held dear to my heart and she held me even closer. She had children of her own but she spared space in her heart for me. I used to spend the school breaks with her and it made for some of the best times of my life. She was a banker, had a nine to five job that was routine for me to expect her at exactly 5:30 every evening of which when she arrived and inspected that my cousins and I had done all our chores would take us to the park and for ice cream. She was a drill sergeant with house chores and shared family responsibilities of which my cousins and I adhered to merely to get that ice cream at the end of the day.
As I was growing up, I have found comfort on her bosom on numerous occasions and she has made me laugh every single time. She has lifted me up in my victories no matter how small they were, she made me feel special. She stood me on her shoulders when I grew weary of the world.
As my grandmother grew old and ailing, she nursed my grandmother mostly by herself as the rest of the family lived in the big city six hours away from my grandmother and my aunt. During the breaks while I was in college I would come back to my hometown to be with my grandmother, I watched my aunt all that time. How she changed feeding bags attached to my grandmother’s stomach, changed her soiled diapers, bathed her and dressed her and talked to her gently and laughed with her boisterously. She seemed to never have tired, she prepared food and made sure the house was in order before leaving for work in the morning then she would return from a long day at work to cook and clean and care for my grandmother further. I watched her do this always with a smile on her face, as if she was enjoying it.
Then one day I asked her, “aren’t you tired?” And she smiled softly, “tired is not a choice for me now. But know this, being able to be the one who cares for your mother is a blessing. I am grateful I have this opportunity to care for her like she once did for me.” I was taken aback by her delight in her toil. She had become the mother and all the years she taught us about chores, she was teaching us about familial responsibilities. What I saw as a sacrifice she saw as a gift. As a mother myself now I aim to instill in my children that familial love that knows no bounds that they may love unconditionally and no toil be too heavy on their backs when it comes to loving another. A gift my aunt, my mother, gave me.
I am married to an amazing man in a foreign country. I came to America with nothing but suitcases to dress myself and trinkets from home to remind me of the home I left behind. I came with all the love in my heart for my husband who took space in it, almost all of it, but a sliver that cut me deep was the family I left behind, a hole that could not be filled no matter how I tried.
I met my husband’s mother over Skype when we were first dating and living in another country also without any family around. She was warm and welcoming, she was loving from the moment she said,”it’s so nice to finally meet you, Amy.” She meant it too. This I know because we began our daily phone calls even when Daniel was at work. We talked about everything under the sun, what I was cooking for dinner, what my plans were for the day, what remedies she could offer if I was ill, what she was doing back in America, we talked and we talked and we talked just like old friends and never was it awkward. There was something between us that told me we belonged together from the get go.
Our phone calls became something I relied upon when I came to America. When I struggled with my mental illness and my grieving thoughts, she held me up, called me and nursed me on the phone for hours to make sure I was not alone, she needed me to know I wasn’t alone. I was never alone with her though I felt separated from the world. In our world, I felt safe.
She sends me packages to let me know she misses me, she makes lists of things from our conversations throughout the year that I like so she can score 100% accuracy when it comes to birthdays and holidays. She sends me a card on Valentine’s Day and every holiday imaginable, she ensures there is no room for doubt that she loves me. Most of all are the phone calls I hold on to as a lifeline. We talk every morning, she detects with 100% accuracy when something is off with me but waits for me to share and when I don’t her lovely voice says,” Baby, are you okay?” I choke up when I hear this because I’m not,”not really, Mom,” that’s what I have called her from the time I met her because I couldn’t call her by her first name as it is frowned upon in my culture and she didn’t like Mrs. Spann either. “I feel like I’m drowning, Mom and I don’t know why.” She sighs because she hurts to hear that,” you’re going to be okay Amy, I’m here with you. You’re not alone baby, you want to tell me about it?” Some days I do and I verbal vomit everything that’s in my head and she listens intently and reminds me she loves me. Never once has she ventured to try to tell me to shake things off, or that things aren’t as bad as they seem or anything to slough off my struggle, It’s as if she knows the exact right things to say at the exact right times.
Days I indicate I don’t want to talk about it, she talks to me about the squirrels outside her window or the beautiful cardinals that have come to visit, sometimes it’s a banana pudding recipe she makes all the time. Anything to stay on the phone with me so I know I am not alone. She wishes she lived by me so she could hold me, but she lives hundreds of miles away and has to hold me on the phone. She has talked me off the ledge when I thought life was not worth living, she has celebrated me on my successes and even the attempts.
She is my number one fan, my number one supporter, there hasn’t been a thing I have published without her wanting to read first because she is genuinely interested and invested in my success. She hurts with whirling intensity when I am hurting. She is my best friend, my confidant, she is my mother. We have been together mother-child for eleven years and counting, my place in her enormous heart has not decreased an iota. I turn to her in times of sorrow as I turn to her in times of elation just the same for I know in her chest there lay no judgment, no fallacies, only the love of a mother.
My three mothers aside from life itself have been the foundation upon which my motherhood has been growing like a steady palm not encumbered by the heat of the desert, because what they have imparted on me is sewn deep within my soul, my being. My three mothers live within me.