... It hit me suddenly as I was lying awake, one night.
I understand that it isn't rocket science or anything, and that countless people have probably uttered these exact same words, but with my "adulthood" comes the realisation that I am beginning to appreciate my mother more than I ever have in my nineteen years combined. This kind of awareness is strange to me, yet comforting in a peculiar sort of way because if you had asked me, last year, what kind of relationship existed between my mother and I, I would have told you that no such relationship existed. We were two beings living under the same roof, occasionally crossing paths and rarely speaking. It wasn't what either of us had chosen and there was no dramatic falling-out. I have never raised my voice with my mother; it just was not the way I was brought up. I just grew up extremely sheltered and protected as a result of my parents' traumatic experiences as a result of the war in Vietnam. It wasn't until my teenage years that my need for some kind of freedom took me over wholly... and I lost touch with the rest of my family. My brother, who was once my best friend, became a stranger.
I searched for new ways to express myself artistically and allowed myself to be absorbed into anything and everything that gave me the opportunity to begin to actually find myself. For the most part- and I only began to understand it recently- my parents allowed me to do so. My mother watched me my cut my clothes with a pair of heavy duty scissors, customizing and revamping the garments of my childhood. She flinched when she saw that I had turned one of her gold sequined gowns into a mini-dress, but she did her best to give me space. She made sure that I could see parts of the world that she could only dream of visiting. I realise that I'm painting a very delicate portrait of our life together, but I would be lying if I said that I never aggravated her to the point where she threatened to do things that neither of us could imagine her doing.
There was a time in my life where I was ready to leave home, and I told her so. And we both cried as all of the bottled resentment that I had for her came rushing out of me faster than I could speak. And she hugged me as I sobbed into her shoulder. And she apologized. And I cried even more because it was the first time that she had held me since I was a child, and I remembered being nine years old and walking in on my dad shaving off all of my mother's hair. I crawled onto her lap and asked her why she was cutting her hair. She made a joke about it being too hot to have long hair. This is where I am going to make reference towards their protectiveness. As I watched the strands of my mother's pitch black hair fall towards the ground, I was suddenly aware of the fact that she was ill and had been so for a long time. And I remembered holding her hand as we picked out wigs and hats for her, and I remembered going to school and listening as my friends asked me why my mom looked so weird. I would shrug because I had no answer for them. Because I had no grasp of the concept of "cancer" at that age.
I love my mother. No, I really, I LOVE my mother.
There it is. It's not the love I show her with cheap cards on mother days. It's the love that comes with the understanding that she is the bravest, strongest, most amazing woman I know and if I end up becoming half the woman she is, I would be content. So, now I'm just wondering if this is the sort of realisation that comes with age and maturity. Is this the kind of knowledge that waits for you as you begin your adult years, like some kind of checkpoint in life? Or is it just something that took me a little too long to realise?
