My Mother – A Girl of 19 Who Was Never Young.
She buried her youth beneath mountains of worries and in big pots of soup. In hands that kneaded bread better than they kneaded dreams. We ate from her palms until they cracked like dry earth. And even then, those same hands caressed our foreheads when we had fevers, pulled the blanket up to our chins when we fell asleep in the wrong places.
Instead of a home, my mother had cold walls and harsh words. Maybe that’s why she built a “home” for us, out of the scent of food and a light left on. She gave everything she had, hoping—perhaps secretly—that someone would notice. She hid her longing in home-cooked meals and spotless houses, in hands that wiped away tears, hoping that by loving us, she might one day feel loved herself.
Instead of a childhood, my mother had long roads, patched dresses, and an emptiness where “I love yous” should have been. She knew hunger and cold, the kind that silences small wishes, before they can even be spoken. Maybe that’s why she learned to love us differently. To say “eat”, instead of sweet words, to smooth out our clothes, instead of covering us in kisses, to place warm bread in front of us, instead of speaking tenderness. And yet, we understood.
She carried nine children in her womb and on her back, never knowing how to carry herself. We were both her burden and her heaven. She held us like fragile vessels but taught us to be stone when life would try to break us.
She prayed for us. So many times that her prayers became wrinkles on her face and on her soul. So many times that maybe God gave her strength, instead of rest.
She never knew how to ask for anything for herself. A lifetime of swallowing small sorrows in silence, of clutching emptiness in her fists, and turning it into Sundays with full tables, into clean clothes, into houses that smelled of baked bread and basil.
My mother. The woman who cooked love for us and fed it to us by the spoonful.
She raised us, some on her hip, some by the hand, others in her thoughts. But she remained the same. With open, ever-working arms, with eyes that measured us to see beyond our words, with a soul that long forgot how to belong to itself.
Mother. Light. Root.
And everything we are today, grew from her.