Dear Mum, You are Not Amazing
Mum,
I’ve known you for 23 years and 9 months. 23 years and 9 months of unending drama. The only thing I want to say on your birthday is that You are simply Amazing.
I would have stopped at the last sentence because in so many unspoken words and gestures that this piece cannot even compete with, those words might be the right way to summarize your awesomeness, mum.
Thinking about it now, there are no right ways to say a mother is awesome enough so instead, (after careful thinking), I’m going to write a few reasons You are not Amazing.
Ø When I was growing up and you’d scold me about doing something wrong I felt bad. I was younger, I am still young, and I do not fail to realize that with the beauty of youth comes foolishness. So mummy, You are not Amazing for scolding me when I do wrong, you are BEAUTIFUL.
What I did not realize is that BEAUTY, your beauty, is not about pretty and warm things. Your beauty is being able to raise your children well.
Your beauty is being tired every day from working and studying so hard. Your beauty is laughing with me and my sisters at random silly jokes till our tummies ache.
Your beauty is even in your gentle stubbornness that gets results and the times you make me and my sisters feel like the most important girls alive.
Your beauty is pure and unpretentious, real and fierce, warm and tough, boundless and unending.
Ø You are not Amazing when I see you tired. Tiredness: the kind only a mother understands and slays (mum, slay is the new word for ‘alluring’).
Your tiredness does not make you amazing, it makes you strong.
Because when I see the very many things you do in a day, a week, a month, a year, I cry sometimes.
I make jokes sometimes too but don’t get it wrong, I do not fail to note your hardwork in the list of Things to do when I am a Mother, because you see mum, I tell myself that if I can be half a good a mother and woman as you, I can make the skies my doormat.
Ø You are not Amazing mum because you lie. Sometimes I know, sometimes I don’t. You mostly choose to omit the truth so that we(my sisters and I) are fine.
The Bible says, ‘Thou shall not lie’, but it didn’t says anything about omitting the truth or lieing because as a mother, you need to protect your child. Sometimes I wonder why. But then I answer my own question, because I know God himself must know how really demandingly beautiful being a mother is. Beautiful and demanding, even if you have to lie to protect your child.
You are not Amazing for protecting me and sisters mum, you are courageous. Armies have weapons and strategy, but all you have is a heart of gold and pure, undiluted love. And for that, the girls and I are eternally grateful.
Ø Mummy, You are not Amazing when you disturb me with endless errands. Ah, I used to dread those errands sometimes. It gets even more amusing when you’d tell me to ‘pass you the remote’ or ‘your purse’ that was right in front of you. And those times you’d wake me up from sleep to compose and send a text message for you on your phone, ah, I’d be reeling with laughter inside. Your strings of errands were annoying most times, but that is how we relate and I absolutely love every bit of it.
And I have not forgotten how you showed me loved without words after we ‘beefed’. You’d call me to ‘come and test this dress’ or ‘have this snack’. I love every bit of our non-verbal love. Our love is ours you and I, and I love you, mum.
P.S
I had to scroll up and count the number of times I used the phrase, ‘You are not Amazing’ and it is 6 times.
In all my life, even if I began to count from the day I was born, I wouldn’t be able to sufficiently say ‘Thank you mum, for being Amazing’.
So instead, today, right now, I’ll do a simply math. (I keep telling myself I suck at math) but I’ll get this sum right.
THE EQUATION
Multiply the 6 times I used the phrase, ‘You are not Amazing’ in this piece by a billion infinities and that would be close to describing how Amazing you are mum.
I love you, Nnenna Idam Okogwu, for being the phenomenally beautiful and amazing mother anyone would be lucky to have.
Seven Hundred and fifty seven words and still, I am unable to fully express in words, the story of your awesomeness mum. Like I said, it is difficult expressing verbally the countless reasons a mother is to die for.
Happy birthday mum, you are one in the entire human population.
GRACE.
