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May 11, 2006
Mother's Day III-Excerpts from an Essay
*My world began in a dusty corner of Pakistan in the relative cool of the winter. My childhood was normal, I suppose, if that statement can ever be made without being made an oxymoron in light of the varied and creative exploits of children. But it had its share of joys and fears and tears, and in the sense that every childhood seems to have each of these in some proportion, my childhood was indeed normal. Being normal, though, did not mean that it was not unique, and from the start it was apparent, though thankfully not to the mind of a child, that my life would be lived in various different worlds.
Mom was from Southern Illinois and Daddy from Pakistan. She was a nursing student in Boulder and he a psychology graduate student in Austin. And somewhere in the Rockies, in the dead of winter, the spark was kindled that would leap into the flame of a blessed life together on the steamy plains of Pakistan.
*If life were peopled with variety, its experience was varied even more greatly. The influences of East and West flowed into my mind as naturally as the tides and sought to mix into some common level It was Mom, really, who made of these parts a consistent whole. She worked creatively to maintain the American side of our heritage, giving Christmas and other holidays their traditional American flavor, while at the same time celebrating them with vigor in Pakistani setting as well.
Christmas meant stockings and stories and Christmas dinner and singing carols around the glow of the advent wreath as we contemplated the meaning of the season. Christmas also meant going to a plethora of dramas at local institutions; greeting the local carolers with traditional oranges and peanuts; watching the midnight procession to the church with its camels and candlelight; going to church, burgeoning with a perennial influx of members; then going home to have dinner with our extended family, with spicy curry and meatballs and rice. The differences were less like the two sides of a coin, than the separate threads of a tapestry, woven together into a whole, mainly because of the influence of Mom.
Her life testified to the understanding that all people were important. She worked countless hours at a hospital, but sill managed to teach me through third grade and my brothers through fifth and seventh, to provide a quality English education for us. She walked to work, an unthinkable action for even middle class people in Pakistan. Her route took her through often squalid streets, sodden with backed up rain water, and past the walls of houses patterned with drying buffalo chips, the fuel of the indigent. And when she saw need or a woman who would greet her, she would stop and talk, often bringing much needed medicines, to the effusive thanks of those who received them. At work, she would often roll up her sleeve to give blood when a patient's relatives refused to do so. Among our family in Pakistan and all others who knew her, she was loved beyond words. There were a thousand other things that I cannot begin to write about her, but simply stated, her life was a testament and a model which has shaped mine more than I will ever know.
*The crescendo of life a MCS came in my senior year. At the beginning of my senior year, a major part of my world was shattered before it totally shattered in July. My mother was killed in an accident. By some reports, four thousand people came to her funeral and the impact of her life became apparent. Life for me would never be the same. But go on it had to, as it always does, and grief and memories slowly eddied into the still backwaters of my mind as I returned to the busy-ness of school.
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For the full essay, click here.
Personal Growth or Lack Thereof | By jackdas | 10:38 PM
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Comments
these are excellent reflections. thanks for sharing, neil.
Posted by: a.c.h. at May 12, 2006 9:25 AM
