I'm Leaving on a Jetplane....

This is it. The bag is packed (in singular form because the husband's isn't) and I am just sitting down to gather my thoughts and pray before we set off to Washington. J's graduation is on Sun 17th and I hope I am not too jetlagged and fall asleep during the ceremony!

This trip has been a time of pre-departure anxiety. I hope, even as I am writing this, that J has booked a car to pick us up from the airport. She has promised to make all the necessary arrangements and it is nice to be on the receiving end of arrangements than the one making them. One of the benefits of having your children grow up on you :) But my anxiety has stemmed more from the uncertainty that surrounds my return. With this spate of H1N1 flu, I almost was not given permission to leave for the US and it was truly a prayer answered that the alert was downgraded from orange to yellow, thus allowing me to travel, but with the dire threat that I will have to "exercise social responsibility" and might have to self-quarantine if the situation worsens between now and my return. I have just committed this to the Lord and focused on finishing my work and getting packed. What is the use of worrying and why worry anyway when God reigns!

I am looking forward very much to seeing J again. It has been a long time and though she isn't thrilled about it, I am looking forward to having her home again. It will also be a time of meeting many new people - people who have loved my daughter and blessed her in many ways and been a part of her life these past 4 years. I am a little bit anxious - it would be a lie if I said I wasn't - largely because I think J has made me out to be this larger-than-life person and I know I am not. Just because my daughters love me, it doesn't mean everyone else would, right? So well, I hope I just relax and enjoy myself, because I know that one thing I struggle with is this deep desire to be liked. It has been an area God has grown me in, especially this last year - just being myself, just a child of God and accepting that.

Well, I didn't set out to write a reflective piece, so I'll stop. My great desire to visit New York has been thwarted by H1N1, because then surely I would be quarantined! and we have changed our plans to visit Chicago instead after we go to Madison. I suppose that is another source of anxiety - meeting my brother and sister-in-law again after more than 15 years. But at the same time I'm also looking forward to it as my brother has gotten on in years and I do want to meet him now that I will be in the US as he does not travel.

Well, there will be silence from me for a while as I set off to the US. Please keep me in your prayers.

My Mother's Days

This is the first Mothers' Day that I have not had either one of my daughters with me. Last year I was in Melbourne and I remember how R made me scrambled eggs for breakfast :) Well, this year, both J and R are away so it didn't feel much like Mothers' Day.

However, today I thought about my own mother a great deal. I confess I have not really thought much about her. Somehow, my dad figured more in my childhood memories than my mum did. And my memory of her has always been that she had an air of resignation and sadness around her. It is strange how I seem to have picked up a number of vibes, whether these were justified or not I don't know. I suppose the inner life of our parents will always be hidden from us. But I felt she was somehow unhappy with what life had dealt her, that my dad could never do enough to please her. I felt that she always wanted me to take her side and I didn't understand what it was that I could do to please her. When I grew older I also felt like a pawn sometimes - especially if I was allowed to go out with my sisters - because when I came back she would ask me to repeat conversations to her. Which I did. And which did not endear me to my sisters. So they would accuse me of snitching on them and I remember not knowing what it was that I was supposed to do - tell and incur my sisters' wrath or not tell and endure my mum's silent anger.

But she was my mother and I loved her. I knew that she loved me in some fashion, shown mostly by letting me sleep with her, by excessive feeding and protection from my sisters and my dad especially when the report cards were not good! That she loved me I have no doubt. But she did not always have time for me.

This morning, I was in KL and my 2 sisters got talking about our relatives in India and the conversation got round to my mother. And somehow, this morning, my mother began to come to life for me as a real person. I heard how her mother (my grandmother) died giving birth to her. So my mother grew up motherless, brought up by her eldest step-brother and his wife. My sister told a story that brought a lump to my throat - how my mum's sister-in-law once gave all the children in the household a cup of milk before bedtime but did not give my mother any. She cried and ran downstairs to her brother who then took her on to his lap and made his wife give her some milk too. And I thought of that little child, being shut out of family life, overlooked among other children and felt sadness. Then I heard that my mother was brought to Malaya to marry my father when she was 14. She had her first child, my sister Rajam, before she turned 15. Then came 8 other children.

What would she have known about raising children when she was a child herself? What would she have known about being a mother when she had not been mothered? And then 25 years of child-bearing! Her first child born in 1931 and her last one (me) born in 1957! No wonder she was tired! I can still see her in my mind's eye now, lying down on the easy chair in the hall with her eyes closed. I used to wish she would get up and talk or do something. But now I think, would I have had the energy if it were me? What did she feel, coming to a strange country at 14 to marry a 23-year old man she had not met? Who helped her - to learn to cook? look after her child? What did she dream of and did any of her dreams come true? What happened that made her suspicious of almost everyone? Did she feel loved?

I wish, now, I had spent more time with my mum.