The sacrifice of the mother

As a child, like any child I suppose, I worshipped my mother. To me, she was the smartest, most beautiful person that ever lived. She was perfect, nay, perfection. I watched her every move, hung onto every word she said. She was always, always right. She definitely earned some of this respect, if that's what you'd call it. I suppose her life revolved around mine. I was her little girl and she'd die for me. Bringing me up well was all she really cared about. She had bought story books to read to me way before I was even born. She did not buy chains of gold or little earrings like other Indian mothers. She just bought books. It was probably not easy for this woman, living in a conservative joint family in a small town with no bookshops to procure these books either. She probably got off from the car in the parking lot, while she was supposed to be waiting for my father to finish his work inside the building, and picked up these books from a bookshop she saw from the car window. But I'm only guessing. I have no idea how this collection of fairytales for children ended up in that very warm upstairs room in the southern corner of the house. Of course I don't remember when she started reading to me. She had probably been teaching me long before I was ever born. She was my first and best teacher. In my circus of a family, she made sure I grew up to be able to think for myself.

When she wasn't teaching me, cooking in the kitchen, cleaning something, making some tea or washing clothes, I'd see my mother weep silently. She wept often. I didn't quite understand why my mother cried. It made me feel sad. At those times, I would stand silently next to her and watch with my eyes wide open. More than anything else, I would be perplexed. Looking back, I know just a little bit better, though I doubt I can ever really understand. I probably prefer not to anyway. What I do know is that my mother was an exceptionally intelligent woman who wanted to make something of her life, but ended up married to my father who ended up married to her. My father was a reluctant husband just as she was a reluctant wife. This they did have in common. But not a lot changed in his life. He went on with his life like he always had, while she moved to a household where everyone had their own expectations of how she ought to take care of this new home and family. This dreamy, absent-minded, brilliant person has gotten lost somewhere, buried deep behind years of sacrifice, which has mostly been taken for-granted and been forgotten. In giving up so much, in never having a choice, my mother gave me the will to never stop fighting for what I believed to be fair. I have always thought that we managed to keep my little brother away from all this pain, when I see him fight even harder for what he thinks is right, I wonder if I mistook his silence for incomprehension all these years.