May 12, 2019. Mothers’ Day.  This morning, at mass, Fr. Chris told us that aside from God, we will only feel real, unconditional love from one other person, and that is not our love partner, but our mother.  He urged each of us to thank our mother and let her feel our love, while she is here.

I am fortunate to have my mother, Pilar or Dada as we fondly call her, still with us.  White-haired, a little bent, much weaker, a bit forgetful,  but still as beautiful as ever, Dada is now 84.  She’s been through the toughest of times, having been widowed at 32 with five young children to bring up in a foreign land.

A no-nonsense, practical woman, she converted our house in the university belt to a boarding house, woke up each day at dawn to go to market, cook for her family and her boarders, get us ready for school, bring us lunch every day, tutor us when we got home, attend our school events, and love us unconditionally.  She never remarried, and instead concentrated on taking care of us.  And when we had all grown up, finished schooling, started working, fallen in love, gotten married and started having kids, she took it upon herself to take care of her grandchildren.  Her love for us is boundless, limitless.

She was very strict, and there was a phase when we were very young that we got spanked almost every day for being naughty.  Spanking stopped when my father died, and my mom had to work really hard to take care of us.  I could see that life was difficult, but mom never complained.  I vowed to finish my studies right away so I could take care of her and the family.  I was hard-headed, strong-willed and impetuous, and must have given my mom quite a few headaches over the years, as did all of us children.

Drawing on my own experiences as a mother, I began to reflect on what it must have been for her as a young mother, far from her native Spain.

I wonder if she felt the same kind of excited ‘want to shout this news to the world,’ yet partly apprehensive love that springs forth when first she learned she was expecting me or my siblings.  Did she worry too, when her body began to change?  When she felt  that first kick and realized that there’s this other person growing within, did she wonder what lay ahead?  Did she also wonder what her children will be like? What kind of persons they will become? And if her children will love her too?

Did she, like me, feel that awesome love that takes root in a mother’s heart that precious moment when first we see our child, carry her in our arms and realize that life will never be the same?  That this little person will always come first, and that our lives will be intertwined forever?

Did she feel that tender, nurturing love when we cradle the baby in our arms and croon her to sleep?  The ‘grit your teeth, bite your lips’ dogged kind of love that lets her suckle, even when your nipples bleed, or carry her for hours even when your back aches.

Did she, like me, have that fierce, determined drive to protect our children from harm, and to discipline and guide them to develop the values they need to survive.  Did it break her heart too each time her children cried from scruffed knees, doctor’s visits, failed quizzes, childhood scrapes, and later from the disappointments of break-ups or misunderstandings?

Did she feel proud when her children garnered honors at school, or acted in a play, or won a school competition?  Did she too have that gut-wrenching feeling of seeing her children grieve over their father’s death, and of not knowing how to kiss this kind of pain away?  How did she manage to pick up the shattered pieces and patch everything back so that her children will feel secure?  How was she able to console her grieving children, when she couldn’t even breathe from pain herself?

Did she too experience the same hurt, when my once adoring children, now teenagers, begin to question me or worse rebel, and I feel them slipping away to become their own person, making their own decisions and living life apart from me?

Did she revel when she realized, like I do now, that the babies I once cradled in my arms, are now full-grown men and women?  That these children can now stand on their own.  Live.  Laugh.  Love.  That they in many, many ways are a better me.  And that somehow along the way, I must have done something good for them to turn out so well.

As I watched my children in the kitchen cook a special Mother’s Day lunch for Dada and me, I whispered a prayer of thanks to the Lord for blessing me with the inestimable joys of motherhood and for allowing me a taste of heaven here on earth.

Thank you, Dada, for bringing me into this world, and for loving me the same way Abuela loved you, with the same kind of unconditional love that makes women soldier on no matter what, through all the pains and heartaches of motherhood.  Indeed, we carry our mother and our mother’s mother, and all the mothers before us, in our heart.  As will our daughters do, some day.