Some of us write on how awesome they are and how we owe them big time yet we can hardly tell the things we have written in their face. As is the common bandwagon except for the few whose mums are digital enough to swipe and acknowledge receipt of the message, we bombard our friends with the messages seeking to get appraisal unfortunately ranked by the number of comments and likes we receive from mostly fake friends. That aside, I have no beef whatsoever with those appreciating their mothers in fb coz I did too; but mostly it wasn’t to reach out to mama but to belong even when I knew mama is using an analog phone.
With such hype, the other side of the coin is equally true. And yes, Mother’s Day is a lonely and hard time for many women. To some, they have lost their mothers or grew up with an absentee mother because she left you with cucu to be married since the other man did not want her baggage. As such, it becomes a time of hurt every time they remember the absence of someone very crucial in their development. Yet to another, the day hurts because she has been married for ages and her heart desperately wants to be pregnant but aren’t able and all hope of cradling your own baby to sleep can only take but a miracle.
You
should actually see us during long December holidays full house and it happens
that we are shelling maize at home. ‘We are farmers by the way and shelling
means like not less than 50 bags of 90kgs, at least and probably a whole day
machine shelling).Hehehe, our area is a bedrock of Ugali and on that note, you can talk to
me nicely and we get that sack of maize sent from home now that we are having
to buy it like gold in the city. My little sister, our last born is the
preferred and nominated chips fryer at home by default. She will be exempted
from inhaling the sheller dust and as all of us settle under the shade after
hard work, we devour that chips bila huruma and in one sitting we end
up finishing an entire ketchup bottle.
Instead of a dinner, my mother would prefer I send
her cash because she feels “Dinner nikuharibu pesa (dinner is a waste of
money) especially with the current economic hard times. Our conversation will
go something like “ Vitu sahizi ni ngumu,
you shouldn’t have strained yourself like that aki mammie.” she calls us mammie whenever she is happy with you by
the way. “It’s YOLO mama Adisa, You only
Live Once and so enjoy” I would say and my siblings will cheer me on this one and
mama will concede.
She would rather I give her cash to purchase
additional Maclik Super for her dairy cow to increase milk yield so that she
never gets to miss 4 o’clock tea in her house. Ooops, and her very beautiful
cow passed on last month just after delivery. Apparently, it was done for CS
that went awfully wrong! “Does that even happen with cows? CS?” Anyway,
mama needs a replacement of a good dairy cow and the potential son in-law needs
to take the cows home now lest your mother in-law starts drinking sturungi which is not funny in the village where escort in most
homes is no vocabulary. Please hurry up, don’t make mother in-law suffer much
and yet you know you can put an end to her milk problem even when Buzeki and
Brookside have decided otherwise. Enough about my memoir on mama now…I don’t
want to loose you already.
But
the truth is, the other side of the story depicts unfathomable pain to the
motherhood fraternity. It becomes paradoxically hurting for a mother who cries
out for the baby she cannot have because of some unknown reason that has defied
the wisdom of doctors. For another, it’s a reminder of the baby she longs to
have in her arms again but she gave up on. The one she delivered while a
teenager in school and decided to offer them for adoption because having the
baby and she was a still a ‘baby’ wasn’t realistic; Plus she didn’t have a
means to fend for them.
As we color everywhere with roses, another is
reminded of the child they lost for something bigger than themselves, to pursue
a dream that now they terribly want to share with that baby they aborted. It’s
been years; she even asked God to forgive her for the series of abortions but
can’t help look at the children of her mate who are turning out to adorable princesita
when she robbed off life out of hers. They hurt because, on this day, the
picture of the discarded foetus cry as they breathe their last as they stared
is still vivid; and no matter the years that have passed, they still envision
that cry that jerks a pain in their stomach. It becomes even sadder if they
ended up rapturing their uterus and can’t have any other child in this life. The
memory of that hurts and the hullabaloo of this day leaves them traumatized.
To some, it’s that raw pain of the child that slipped away before you ever held
her. You carried her for 9 months. Walked through the pregnancy gloom and joy,
watched her grow and kick your tummy. Saw them making you crave for simsim and miwa in the middle
of the night, but you loved them to bits. You had a name chosen for them and
had bought everything a newborn needed. On the delivery day, you were at the
hospital at the right time, the fluid broke and you were determined to garner
strength to push her. The dilation was so normal. You were not a couch potato;
you exercised and even went to work till the last week. Then comes the familiar
echo; “Push” and you courageously to do it. Finally, you are ready to meet up
with that princess that has seen you eat things you wouldn’t imagine; the baby
comes and you pass out for a few minutes, but the baby also comes out and somehow,
she doesn’t make it. The term the doctors used was,” sorry mama, yours was a
blue baby” she went too soon and you never got to rock them in your arms, not
even to breastfeed them. And all you have left is a series of stretchmark’s or
knife mark.
I can write about many women, who hurt on this day,
· Those who would instinctively want to call mama and realize that despite her promotion to glory 10 years ago, her mobile number is stuck with you and it hurts.
· Those whose children were never born because they had a miscarriage on the third trimester.
· Those who lost their children too soon and can’t still find peace to accept that they are gone. It hurts so much that the grief is slowly eating away that mama who can’t even write off the name of a dead child on the medical insurance coz it feels like writing off a baby she who is part of her.
· Those who have been gang raped and ended up conceiving and being infected even with HIV and the look on that baby makes you hate motherhood. A reminder of pain that saw beastly men steals your innocence and subjects you to stigma that you even attempted suicide that has never succeeded.
Sometimes church remains the only place these mothers will try to find comfort. But you realize, some churches do special things like giving roses and eclairs which is fantastic but amidst the joy around, such kind of mothers find themselves lost and cold-shouldered. They will smile with the rest and put on some nice makeup and mascara for the mother’s photoshoot but inwardly bleeding with every shot.
With the society somehow associating women with giving birth and mothers, this group of women really feel excluded. But today, I write to encourage them; those whose pain is awakened by such celebrations. I am a Christian, Bible believing and practicing one and I want you to know that I do not understand your pain, but my God does.
The
same way it breaks you to the last piece having lost your baby or pregnancy or
not getting to sustain a baby in your womb so does God love you. When it hurts
so much, may you be reminded of the tenderness of God as a mother. One
Lauren Winner in her book writes on how God borrows the image of a mother in
labor to show God’s wish to birth His people in Isaiah 42:14. Isaiah writes
again describing God as a comforting mother: He says “As a mother comforts her
child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted…” Isaiah 66:14 .
I share these verses to make you know that the heart
of God is exactly like that of a mother. He understands your pain, and He wants
to comfort you who hurts whenever motherhood is celebrated. That He will meet
all of your needs because His tenderness sees our shattered and agonizing self.
It’s okay not be ok. It’s okay to cry unto the Lord
with anger, bitterness, grief and brokenness. He understands your unspoken
emotions. I may not know who will read and be touched by this, but I want you
to know that my prayers and thoughts are with you. I love you. I’d love to
visit you, get you a bar of chocolate and just listen quietly to your story.
Listen not because I have answers or I understand the intensity of your pain
but because I know who has answers and can help you. You are not alone.
So on this Mother’s Day after church, I will light a
candle in my sitting on behalf of all the women who are in pain, and send a
prayer your way.
Hugs & Prayers!!
Chiddy, The Sisters’ Keeper
