Ever wondered why you can’t keep track of the number of Mothers’ Day that are celebrated in a year? I always wondered about myself until it became clear to me. They are super-beings and I cannot emphasise that enough.
These women juggle everything. The onus is on them to hold down the home fort – a full-time job with overtime included – and at the same time go out and make a living. If they don’t qualify as beings displaying the gift of superpowers is in reality then I don’t know who does. I would not go into the details because we all have grandmothers, mothers, sisters, aunts and female mentors and we have seen them in action and probably are beneficiaries of their feminine prowess. However, these women have what I have termed as their ‘Kryptonite period’. This is their period of vulnerability that comes with hard work and old age. That is when we need to don our own capes and be their super hero.
The very popular poem ‘My Mother’ by Ann Taylor was quite an anthem whilst growing up. As a child, it was framed on the wall and whenever I saw it, I hummed a bit of the poem out loud. Yes, the general idea of the poem is about appreciation of mothers because they are saddled with a lifelong task that is just as important as sitting at board meetings of a fortune 500 company. But I tell you now, this poet revealed much more in the forth stanza of her six-stanza poem.
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“And can I ever cease to be
Affectionate and kind to thee,
Who was so very kind to me,
My Mother?”
As the years go by, scientists, doctors, fitness experts and many more have been looking for ways to halt the ageing process but this is to no avail. It is the cycle of nature, right from the time a child is born and it starts to age, which is why the question isn’t, ‘How young are you?’ but it is asked in the reverse. The world has changed from when our mothers were young ladies and it is still changing, adding to the gazillion things that they have to keep up with.
Technology. Sometimes it seems like they don’t just want to learn. Rather than read the manual, she calls on you to come teach and the next day you find yourself explaining the very same thing to her. Or is it when you are already running late for a very important event for which you had graciously decided to carry her along because she has been in doors all week, and she seems to be extraordinarily slow, you begin to wonder why she cannot keep up at your pace.
You attend a wedding where she sees her old friends whom she has not seen for a long while and then she’s just chatting away, paying no mind as time flies and you remember telling her earlier of your plan to go out for drinks with your own friends. She just can’t seem to remember everything she tells you and she ends up repeating everything she sat you down for hours unending as if she’s telling you for the first time. Yes you are impatient, why not? After all, time waits for no man. She would always be there when you need to find her, abi?
This impatient thing ‘get as e be oh but God dey’. Let’s take a look at this from another angle. Do you remember the time she carried you within her for nine months, sang to you in her belly, prayed for you and caressed your back? Or was it when you pooped on her right before she was able to saddle you in your diapers and she gave you a fat kiss on your lips right after and blamed no one but herself for not foreseeing such an event? Or was it when she packed your lunch bag with loads of love, never forgetting to put in your favourite snacks? Or when you were excited about the new song the music teacher taught and everyday for one month you did a presentation of the song for her?
I could go on and on but I would never finish. She has been and still is your super hero, are you her super hero?
It really doesn’t require much but your time, patience and support. All these can be summed up in one word, love. Love her more than you love yourself for such is the love that she had for you. So as we celebrate this season of love, let your mother be your number one valentine, spoil her as much as you can now because she would not be here forever but those memories would last a lifetime.
Happy Valentine’s day!
Oluwaseyi Lawal
