An Ode To My Mother.

Sometimes I think of my mum and imagine what she must have been like as a teenager. As a young woman. What had she liked? What did she get up to? Why did she make the decisions she did? What excited her?

Did she like to play dress up, or did she bury her head in a book instead, forgetting the world outside.

I can’t help but think “who were you before the term wife and mother was placed on you”.

I want to have these discussions, to see life through her eyes. But my mother isn’t a talker so I guess I’ll stay content with thumbing through old picture albums and trying to decipher her from them.

In one of my favorite pictures of her, she is smiling. A rarity as she hardly smiles in pictures. The smile explodes across her face and I wish that I can freeze that moment in time so that smile is a constant everyday of her life.

My mother.

Sometimes I find myself in the slant of her eyes, in the curve of her lips. Her supple skin. In the quiet way she goes through life. Absorbing life’s hits and always always bouncing back.

In so many ways I want to believe that I am like her and in many ways I am not. I inherited her quiet demeanor. Her awkwardness. Her shy smile.

My mother is tough. I am not.

Sometimes it feels like she can do anything. My mother can whip an outfit together from pieces of left over fabric, can bake, can cook up a storm.

She is selfless. My mother; this woman who was thrust into motherhood before she barely even found her footing. She wears motherhood well.

And as cliche as it sounds. If I am even half the mother that she is to my own kids, by God that will be enough. It will be enough.