THE LEGACY OF MOTHERHOOD

I was going through some old pictures that belonged to my Dad and came across this picture that was taken in the late 1920's before his family immigrated to Hawaii from the Philippines.  My Dad (second from the left), never returned to the Philippines once he arrived here at age seven.  My Grandmother (the young woman on the right) went on to have another four children in Hawaii, but died at the relatively young age of 66.  I was 12 when she passed away and I remember when I asked my Dad how she died, he answered, "She worked herself to death."  It's interesting that whenever I see a picture of my grandmother, I always think about what my Dad told me about her.

Later in life, my aunties and cousins would show me pictures of my grandmother and we collectively made note of the fact that she never smiled in any of the pictures that were taken of her.  In most of the pictures (like the one above), she looked like a woman who had an enormous weight and responsibility on her shoulders. Even in my experiences with her as a young boy, I rarely remember her smiling or laughing.

It's a stark contrast to the pictures in our family photo album where my mother's smiling face is in the middle of every shot, surrounded by her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Mom didn't have to endure the hardships of my Dad's mother, but she did manage to raise a large family with less than perfect circumstances.  Now when I look at the pictures of my siblings families, I really see the influence and affect that the "mother" had on each family.

Maybe it's because we come out of our mother's bodies that we connect to them in a way that is different from our fathers.   Mother's really create the "glue" that holds a family together and is the single determining factor on how "close" a family grows as they age and mature.  No other person on the planet has the power that a mother does.

I talked to my son Caine yesterday and we're probably as close as a father and son can be.  But he shares a different kind of relationship with his mother that is unique and special in ways that don't translate into our relationship.  She can connect and comfort him in a way that began in the womb, a miracle of nature that only a mother and her children can understand.  God's first blessing upon us is the journey from our mother's body and that mother/child connection we never lose.

I'm aware that not everyone has a positive connection with their mother.  Family dynamics sometimes create rifts that are never healed.  But regardless of how we feel about our mothers, when we lose them, our world is never the same.  Amongst my brothers and sisters, we've lost our Dad, our spouses, even our children, but our most devastating loss happened when our Mom died in 2009.

Though my grandmother didn't smile much, I know that motherhood brought her great joys that she could not have experienced in any other way.  Maybe she would have smiled more if she knew that 80 years into the future her grandson would finally express the joy she had all along.

Happy Mother's Day, Grandma!