For Mothers

My mother never attended my school plays. She never watched my soccer matches or avidly drove me and my teammates home or out for pizza. She always pressed my pants with a seam down the middle - making me the target of far too many 5th grade jokes.

There was always something different about Ma. She only seemed to laugh at things I didn't find funny. I don't recall her reading me bedtime stories, but I could go on at length at the number of times she woke me up with a shrill voice from the kitchen. I never had cool sneakers until I was old enough to buy them myself, and by that time I was apprehensive about spending my last dime on a pair of Jordans.

My summers were spent in study camps rather than in basketball ones and were it not for my father's boldness and encouragement, I may have never learned to swim because of her fear of water. I've always thought my mother to be cruel and unusual - that she gained some sort of strange satisfaction in my being a social misfit. I remember my anger at her not coming to my defense in racial incidents at school and being ashamed that I was the product of working class immigrant parentage - unable to afford the kinds of upper class hobbies and vacations my private school classmates often bragged about.

My mother and I never spent much quality time together. She asked me of my homework and hurried me off to bed, retreating with bags under her eyes or before going off to work again. My spare time was spent doing chores around the house or irritating our tenants by chasing my sister up and down the stairs.

I've spent much of my adolescence in some sort of brooding and harboring resentment toward my mother for all the experiences I didn't have. Only as an adult have I come to accept and truly be thankful for all that she has given me. Without her I may not have been ambitious or kind or generous. I may have never known the importance of having freshly polished shoes. I've been tying neckties since I was about nine years old. Were it not for my prep school education afforded by her countless sacrifices, I may not have ever been introduced to Thoreau or Fitzgerald alongside with Angelou and Wright. I may have never learned to cook or clean for myself. My mother pushed me for greater things and never allowed me to make excuses for my shortcomings or for those who were too shortsighted to acknowledge my skill before my skin. She is my Guyanese Tiger Mom, my motivation shaped in flesh, and the voice in my ear that says "you can do better."

For all of these things and more, I am thankful and could only hope to raise a family with half of her determination and courage. I am thankful for mothers who bore sons and daughters in hope that they would have lives greater than they could imagine. Thank you to mothers who sharecropped and chopped cane and washed clothes and braided hair and bathed other people's children. Thank you to mothers separated from their children by sea or by servitude, by choice or by circumstance, who despite their tears sent up prayers that the world would be kind to their children and never let a day go by without thinking about them. Thank you for the strength of the womb that nurtures us all in tranquil safety until we are borne into this strange place. Thank you mothers, aunts, sisters, wives, cousins, grandmothers and great grandmothers for your hope, your power, your creativity, your sacrifice, your prayers, your persistence, your pain, and your love. To you, we owe something that can never be repaid. Instead we remember your words and your smiles, and your strength and invest in the children to come.