Mom

My mom
“You who are mother unto me,” said Edgar Allan Poe
I have read the writings of Wendell Berry and that of Maya Angelou
I want to tell you that my mom gave her life for me.

Loving the living is a different emotion
That is aroused by playing a different string than the one for loving the dead
One has to play the A and E string in the mind’s head
With the eyes closed and the violin close to the chin instead.
“Requiem for my mother” by Rebecca Dale is closest to what I might have said.  

I don’t recall ever seeing my mom
But by listening to others I know that my mom had died for me.
She didn’t live long enough for my speaking abilities to have developed
Thus she never heard from me, “Mom I love you.”
But she told me that she loved me when I was inside her and by giving birth to me.

It was a hot July evening
When a cold fever had come upon her
Soon she had a bit of a tummy ache
Not an uncommon thing in a pregnant woman.
They said that she had become progressively weaker and rather pale and withdrawn
Her tummy grew bigger
As time went by her
Someone examined her and told her that she had tubercular peritonitis
She should get an abortion to save her life.

They said that she sat in front of a window in her room
She kept looking at the cows and the goats and the fawns that grazed in our pasture
Tears ran down like a flowing river
At times she just gazed but didn’t see
Heavy thoughts in her mind blocked the scene that was in front
Or to make choices that were easy
She thought she was trying to see through a bloodstained veil seeped in emollient.
But she knew that she could see into her inside clearly like in Isaiah 49:1.
Where two innocent cells that had multiplied to be a child, a human.
She had already felt a kick one afternoon.

I grew inside her for six more months
As my mom continued to get weaker.
She often held a tilted mirror to her face
So that I could see clearer from inside her.

The doctor had said that there was no Streptomycin or Rifampin at that time
In a poor country
In the turmoil of being occupied by a foreign power
Our family was gathering people together
Fighting for independence
In a surreptitious manner.
They said she wept but didn’t whimper
She wanted me to know only her simper
I moved whenever I heard the cantata of my mother’s amor.

She sang the song of love
The song that Draupadi sang in her peril
When she had asked Lord Krishna to shield her from the humiliation of men
The Song of love with Katherine Hepburn wasn’t released till nineteen forty seven.

She wanted me to hear her voice in music and in song
As I quickened inside her bellybutton
She rubbed her tears on her stomach
For me to feel the salt of the earth
For me to understand the beauty of life
And for me to be energized
As she imbibed in me her strength
The consumption slowly depleted hers.
Making her life reach the Hayflick limit   

Soon after giving birth she had died
They said she had held me
And had gifted me to the Gods for my protection and adoration
She had said that she would always be with me as I would grow up to be a man
May be someday I would learn to love
As my mom had loved me
By making me born!