2008
May 
11

Mom

12:44  
 

Don’t worry, I promise I’ll call too

Last night I heard a load of people almost griping about how they had to get up early and go see their mothers today. You have to? Really?

I would like to go see my mom today (Hi, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day, by the way), but it ain’t in the cards. I will see Mom soon, and I just saw her last week—we took our mandatory Mother’s-Day-picture. It used to be that Arnold (brother) and I would all take a picture with our mom and grandmother, but it is getting increasingly difficult to get us all in one place, so we take small group pictures instead now. This year it was just me and mom and Jeff, and then a hilarious second-take with my mom wearing the scarf I bought her in Cairo as a hijaab—which was its original intended purpose, I suppose. It was cute anyway.

Back to my point, if you feel that you have to begrudgingly go and see Mom on Mother’s Day: don’t. Go see her on a different day when you feel happy about seeing her. Send a card or call on Mother’s Day, but don’t make a big deal out of it, just enjoy your time when you can.

See, it’s about quality time, after all. I have very few life-long regrets, but one is that I grieved over my grandmother’s death before she died, and in the process, I forgot that she was still alive. In the two years that she had cancer I saw her very little, and when I did, our interactions were perfunctory—as though they had been rehearsed. It wasn’t until the week before she died—the very last time that I saw her—that I felt like she and I were the same people we used to be I wrote the experience here.

Again, to redirect, I wish not to be a downer, only to remind everyone—myself included, to go see the people you love when you want to, not when you have to. Remember that even if you don’t get along with your family—genetic or chosen—that they are doing the best they can with the resources that they have at their disposal. And, don’t forget to thank them for the things that they did which made you who you are, whether they meant to or not.

So, on that note, I wish to thank my mom for the following things:

  1. Reading to me every night when I was a kid, so that now I would enjoy reading and writing more than almost any other activity
  2. Teaching me, by example, about patience
  3. Becoming a vegetarian when I did and remaining one even to this day, even though I no longer am
  4. Teaching me the importance of spelling and proofreading, and for the book about the joy of diagramming a sentence—it is among my favorites.
  5. Never, ever asking when I was going to quit going to school and get a job, and for telling me that she thinks of me as a scholar anyway
  6. Innumerable other little things that I never once took for granted, even though it may have appeared that way

I love you, Mom. Happy Mother’s Day.