When Mothers’ Day Hurt Really Bad...

Just the girlie me

Mother’s Day is one of those days the social media is flooded with pictures of hardworking women from the village who still use kabambe of orange bonga points as both phone and torch because rural electrification is still a vision 2030 thing in those villages; Most of them with jagged fingers destroyed by dews as they pick tea leaves in the highland of Kericho or whatever. Those whose finger prints have been serrated by holding a jembe for way too long or smearing the walls of houses with rough sand and cow dung for as long as some of us swiping our gadgets meticulously have lived. Yes, writing incredible and tear arousing memoir to our moms who unfortunately can never get to read it. 

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  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. So 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.

 

Meet Mama Adisa on her way from church

You see, Mother’s Day is an awesome thing to celebrate Mums and the fact that they are the only people who are able to get love you and still call you baby even when you are 70. We want to appreciate them which is great like I would my mum by just calling her up and appreciate her; or maybe plan a secret dinner paid for where dad can just take her out after church in town. My mum doesn’t fancy this western things sijui eti pizza, English breakfast with bacons and baked beans, haha now (with Nigerian accent). But she loves French fries and Choma anytime of the day. 

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. So 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 dont want to loose you already.

The cows will be many in this home I tell you

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 and breathe its 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. So 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 period, 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 condition” 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 cant 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 coldshouldered. They will smile with the rest and put on some nice makeup and mascara for the mothers 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!!

Happy Mothers Day to you all!