MUM STORIES: Ma, what kind of modern mother would you be?

I stumbled on my mother’s 1993 journal and got a glimpse into what life must have been like for her as she carried me in her womb. It was a bread crumb trail of her pregnancy in to my life.

She must have been exhausted, going by how faded out her writing became at some point, but she mustered enough strength on November 17 and wrote “False Labour Pains!” I was born two days later.

Twenty-three years on, it is an ordinary day.

I can’t help but tiptoe through her poignant writing, careful not to knock any word out of place. My mother, Tess, wrote more in hope than expectation. Her interests, her hopes, her plans for the future wove the brittleness of life into strong meaning.

HER WORLD WENT WITH HER

Her world, however, seems to have gone with her. In her era, motherhood was a collective interest. Today, it is a privatised venture complete with full and part-time options. Mothers comfortably operate in the realm of plausible deniability. I have always wondered what my mother would have been like, if she had been pregnant in 2013. Maybe she would have grown into a modern-day mother. I imagine she would never keep a diary. Mum would, however, incessantly tweet her feelings to other mothers and the world; everyone but us, her children.

My mother today probably would not be any different from her modern ilk. Somewhat she would be overtly convinced that her working to the last inch of the skin translated to her love for us. Securing our future, huh? She would deeply be buried into ‘providing for us’ that she would never see herself stealthily walk the work stress into our home. We would crave her attention in the gifts she would buy us.

I imagine her sitting cosily on the poolside lounge on a lazy Sunday, her laptop cuddled up on her lap. She would be looking out for more organic recipes to try out when we get home. She was an empowered woman too concerned about global warming to see the teenagers sixteen centimetres away who were happily mixing whisky with soda.

Someday on the eve of Mother’s Day, she would stumble upon my diary on the laptop she bought for my birthday. She wouldn’t remember which one, she would have bought too many of them. ‘One can never have a perfect mom, I want to feel mothered’. It will be too late to unread that entry. She had given birth to a son with no mother.

My mother knew better. Through her writing, she challenged motherhood and by extension, womanhood. I dare say she was an activist!. She just never lost herself trying to dig up the answers. She was a loving mum to her six children, her step-children and her literature students.

As I write this in the run-up to Mother’s Day, I can’t help but wonder why I took two days off the 2,624 days we spent as mother and son.

Happy Mother’s Day Tess Sande Okwany. Rest in peace.

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