THIS HAPPENED TO ME
One Lucky Mother
Is she a model parent who is perfect at parenting?
Watching wildlife feeding their chicks reminds me of my mother. Watching wildlife protecting their young no matter the sacrifice especially reminds me of my mother.
And whether or not you have children of your own, how can you not be touched by a sparrow parent feeding its chicks? Or a starling feeding its chick even when the chick is as big as the parent? Or a parent coot feeding its chicks?
I have watched such tender scenes many times.
In my garden where I provide birds with bird food and fresh water, even the berries that I leave untouched in my blueberry and fuchsia trees. For the birds. They love those berries.
In various lakes around the county in the north of England where my husband and I take our walk and feed (if allowed) the water birds, watching parent birds feed their spring-born chicks is so, so precious.
Such scenes I get to watch — of birds doing their role, that of parents to their offspring — remind me of my own mother.
It is not because she is as caring like how mothers are supposed to be. No way. No way at all.
She is the epitome of an imperfect mother.
Perfectly imperfect specimen
With my seven siblings, Mother left us in the care of our elderly grandfather and step-grandmother.
Mother left us to elope with another man to start living a lie as a “proper” husband-and-wife in a mining community, a place that required all-day travel by land and by sea.
I was 13 years old at the time. My youngest sibling was not even one-year-old.
Looking back, those were the years that were most traumatic for me and my siblings, but most likely, a hundred times stressful for our maternal grandparents.
It might not be as bad for me and my sister (four years younger) next to me. The two of us had a different father who was a perfect imperfect specimen of a father who abandoned us as soon as we were born.
My grandfather took us in when Mother took up with my stepfather, who fathered six children. Born one after the other, I should add.
Grandpa had a big old house in a compound, but he was not rich. My sister and I lived in the big house. Our six siblings lived in a tiny bungalow which was in the compound.
The father of the six — a kind stepfather to me and my sister — was a live-in chauffeur to a Chinese millionaire.
The humiliation of my stepfather from the gossipy neighbours was something I could not imagine, until now. It took him several weeks before he finally showed up to care for my six siblings. He did not take full charge, though, because of his six-day, live-in, measly-paid job.
Ashamed for being cuckolded, my stepfather went home to his children, under cover of darkness, on Saturday evenings. He brought food in bags that would supposedly last for a week. (It did not.)
He refused for a time to speak to grandpa, blaming the old man for Mother’s wickedness.
But it was grandpa and my step-grandma — especially the latter — that looked after the needs of my very young siblings. Oh, how this old couple got deep in debt for my mother going astray!
Eventually, Mother appeared one day from out of the blue.
No, it was not to return and be a mother to her eight children. That would totally be out of her character. She did not care for others, even for her flesh and blood. She only cared for herself.
She put up a small business, a food shop cum eatery, in the mining community. And she needed grandpa and later, my eldest brother who was growing up, to help. She bought food supplies in Manila — boxes and boxes each time — and grandpa and my brother helped, like baggage boys.
A few years later, my siblings and I took turns in travelling to this island to do unpaid job in the shop/eatery. We were not introduced as her children. Would you believe that? The community thought — because that was what Mother and her partner said — that we were nieces and nephews.
She was found out in no time at all. The imperfect mother that unmothered us throughout our life.
Fast forward to present day
My siblings and I are now all parents. All our children, except for one, have lives of their own.
None of us followed the footsteps of our mother.
None of us gave good parenting a miss. It may not be “perfect” parenting, but none of us abandoned our parental love and obligations.
We all learned from the trauma we went through, that of having an uncaring, selfish absent mother. And none of us wanted to inflict the same on our flesh and blood.
Unsurprisingly, Mother had moved in with us, her children, over two decades ago. Her business went bust. The mining operations ceased due to environmental issues. The once vibrant place is now a ghost town.
Mother was left with no money. She only had a small bungalow in that island that was once rich in copper. None of us, siblings, wanted that sorry property.
Mother alternated staying and enjoying life between houses. Each of us eight has a house of our own, although three of us live permanently in the West.
She acts and makes it clear she has a right to be cared for, even pampered. She thinks we all owe her. But, sure, we owed her our life.
A very lucky mother
Mother is now in her mid-80s and has dementia. I could not say she is suffering. On the contrary. She is being well cared for. My siblings who are in the Philippines take turns looking after her.
My seven siblings and I have all become her mothers.
Is she not very lucky? She is being looked after and cared for by her children who she abandoned for almost all of our young and adult life.
We have all become that parent sparrow caring for a chick, a helpless chick whose flight feathers are now regressing irrevocably.
Recommended reading:
This heartfelt poem by touched a chord in my being as she gives thanks to her parents by honouring their memory on her birthday.
I find this piece by to illustrate the exact thing that children need from their mothers / parents.
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