Today it’s Mother’s Day . I’m very excited as this is my first Mother’s Day as a mother. I’ve already bought Mother’s Day gifts for myself and a cake too as hubby is not good with these kind of social events. So he gave me his card and I went on shopping spree buying Mother’s Day pressie. Bought myself 2 beautiful charms one of which is mother’s pearl charm and another one says MUM and a nice robe. I hope hubby was taking notes so that he knows what to do next year.
I gave birth to my beautiful baby boy last year. It was the most amazing and surreal experience of my life. I know it’s a kind of cliché when woman says child birth is most amazing, significant and indescribable joy and experience of their life. I used to feel the same way but now I know better. It’s true. Being a mom changes your perspective of life. I can go on and on about this immeasurable joy, but maybe in my next post.
In this post, I want to pay tribute to my mom ( whom I call maa). As being a mom now, makes me realize how precious my maa is and how much I love her.
Needless to say, I’m on maternity leave at the moment. My daily routine is caring, spending and loving my lil bub. When he’s asleep, I do get to indulge by watching TV or surfing the internet. I was watching morning show today. There are lots of promotion and advertisement on telly for Mother’s Day. One of the network is doing makeovers for working busy mom. The mom who was getting makeover had five sons. They nominated her for a makeover as she’s been too busy looking after them that she had ignored herself. I thought that was the sweetest gift the sons could have given her to show their love. It just reminded me of how much of a supermom my maa is.
My maa had a tough life. As a child, she didn’t have a mother to look after her as she passed away when my mom was a baby. But my grandfather remarried and brought home a nasty stepmother. She didn’t cared for her. My maa used to tell us stories about how she didn’t even had food to eat. Due to these hardships, she started working at my dad’s business when she was about 12-13. That’s how they met and fell in love.
Due to being of different caste ( caste
system is big deal in countries like Nepal), they had to elope as my father’s family was not ready to accept my maa. They were kicked off from family home and stripped off from family inheritance.
My mom and dad had to start off from zero. They struggled to feed the family of six daughters. My dad started his own business and they were working 18 hours a day to put food on the table and a place to call home. They went through such hardship sacrificing their youth to raise a family and give us a better life. My elder sisters used to help out with the family business and they used to look after us too. They made sure that we got good education so they enrolled us into boarding school. Not only it is a big deal to give daughters an education, on top of it, we were sent to boarding school to get the best education. I remember we were the only 3 girls who went to this prestigious English medium school from our area. Our neighbors used to be quite jealous of that and used to fill my father’s ears saying why does he bother getting us education, once they marry they will be caring for in-laws not the parents.
My parents never waiver from their commitment to give us a better future.
My family business took off and started bringing lots of profit around the time when I was 7-8 years old. My parents were still putting all their effort into making our business grow.
My maa was juggling with looking after 6 daughters and helping out with the business. She never had time for herself. No vacations, no pampering, no me-time. Her only breaks were few family visits to temple. We did once went to India for few weeks but that was also a business visit.
Then I never understood how much it takes to just give and give and never ask for anything in return. She never complained, never made us feel how tough life she’s been living. When it was not us demanding her time, she had to care for my dad. Cooking, cleaning, caring for us and dad took all the best years of her youth.
2 years ago my dad passed away suddenly. It was very shocking tragedy for my maa. Suddenly she’s all by herself and lonely. She doesn’t know what to do with all the time she has. She’s still coming into terms with the fact that my dad is not there anymore.
I’ve invited my mom to Australia twice now. We are trying to give all her lost time and compensate for all her life long effort in raising us by taking her to all these beautiful places. She loved the beautiful beaches as she’s seen it the very first time. She was amused to see Opera house, Harbour Bridge, kangaroos and koalas. Now most of her daughters including me are living overseas. loves Great Ocean Road drive. She loved it so much that she asked me to buy her koalas and kangaroos as a souvenir. I was much happy to obliged and bought her half her suitcase full of it.
She also visited my sister in United States. She’s been to New York , Niagara Falls, Washington, D.C.
Seeing her this happy to visit all the new places gives me contentment of knowing that we are giving something back for all the love, nourishment, care and time a mother gives to her child.
I love my mom and on this Mother’s Day I thank her for my life and everything else.
MrsGrg Blog 