I hated cliches, until I became one.
I like to think of myself as someone who forges my own pathways, and even as someone who goes against the flow. So, the following is tough to admit. This cliché has been taunting me ever since my daughter arrived 22 months ago.
“When you have a child of your own, you will understand”?
And it’s been quite smug about it too.
My birthday has always been an annual reflective bookmark. Stop the busyness. Recalibrate my scopes. Count my blessings (it’s hard not to with so many wonderful friends and family getting in touch, calling, texting posting good wishes). This year it is deepened by my recent trip back to my roots (the longest I have ever been away from southern African shores approx. 5 years of immigration and pandemic imposed exile) and an emotional journey of saying farewell to my mom’s spirit at her one-year ceremony (after her passing, as marked by the Tamil tradition, at 11 lunar months). My daughter has only met her over video call (weekly or more often and always involving my mom singing to her – often “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”). Their lives overlapped for just under a year.
My relationship with my mom was not always smooth. There were many battles of will and clashing expectations on both sides. But, in retrospect, this darn cliché holds true. As the day that marks the anniversary of my birth approaches, I find that the thoughts and memories of my mother flow through me. This is the first year that there will be no 6am phone call (she was always the first to call). No unique mom generated birthday joy – she made every birthday so magical, especially before I left home. And in so doing, made us feel very special, despite our circumstances. And it wasn’t about gifts either (we mostly got practical and affordable gifts -for a while we got new clothes only on our birthdays). It was about the day. It was about you. And it was about a special cake. There was always one person to which the day you arrived in this world was the most cherished day.
Now I know,
that having that as a child, was a privilege.
Now I know that,
all mothering ( and fathering ) is a best effort – the absolute best you can do, the absolute most you can give, then and there – It will never be perfect.
{Of course you already get all of this without having a child, it’s just for me that it took that event to get there}
Now I know that,
amidst all the celebrations of self and life to come once a year from here on (should I be so blessed with such longevity), there will always be a sacred stillness underneath. A deeper remembrance of from whence and from whom I came. Every birth day will also be the real mother’s day [/aunt’s day/ grandma’s day and all the ancestors too]
Here’s where I end with another cliches worth a second look…
"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken"
Us at the Drakensburg mountains in Kwa-Zulu Natal.