When I woke up this morning, I saw my 14-year-old daughter secretly preparing breakfast. She said it’s for her mom because it’s Mother’s Day.
It was a scrumptious breakfast with bacon, choco-chip pancakes, scramble eggs and cheese, and they were all perilously stacked on top of one another, like a cheesy Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Incidentally, if you google the leaning tower, this pops up: -
“The famous Leaning Tower is located in Pisa, standing on a grassy field known as "Square of Miracles"”. This is an apt theme for Mother’s Day this morning.
For me, the leaning tower represents maternal imperfections and it nestles on the grassy field of miracles. These little miracles are seen in the eyes of our children. That’s the enduring picture of motherhood on this special day.
If you read the papers today, the Life section, three single mothers stand out. They are Ms Faridah Ali Chang, Ms Nancy Thio and doula Ginny Phang-Davey.
Reading their stories, you will note they do not put themselves out as supermoms, but as ordinary moms overcoming extraordinary odds. And they are extraordinary because they never gave up.
Just for the purpose of this post, I would like to bring out the story of Nancy Thio. She is a lawyer.
Her husband, Thomas, passed away in 2011 of colon cancer. He was only 38.
Before that, Nancy said that “life was ideal for (us). We were married five years before we had kids. We travelled the world. I loved him very deeply.”
She recalled that Thomas was promoted quickly and posted to many countries by his company. During that time, they were relishing the good life.
However, when he had cancer, Nancy stopped working for two years to take care of him.
She said: “My identity was very derived from my husband. He was a very intelligent man who rose from zero to someone people looked up to. He was a very loving and responsible father and husband.”
After Thomas passed on, Nancy was completely lost. She had to take care of their three children. She said: “To be a parent is already tough” and her early season as a widower mum proved to be an “overwhelming, lonely and brutal journey.””
“There were times when I wanted to run away from my children. I felt like an evil mother...I had self-doubt and self pity and I couldn’t go out with friends who were couples. I was labelled as a widow and felt my family was incomplete without a father.”
Nancy said that she spent her time hiding in the gym, “drank to numb her pain and took midnight drives alone.” She added: “I was physically present for the children, but emotionally absent. I couldn’t deal with the fact of raising them on my own without my beloved husband.”
Two incidents thereafter changed her life around. Here is the first incident as reported.
“...about three months after his death, when the tyre of her car burst on an empty road.(Nancy) remembers sobbing by the kerb for an hour and angrily telling God: "This I also have to do."”
She said that “the car had been her husband's domain, besides finances and household maintenance such as changing the lightbulbs.”
"I felt very tired and helpless. I was thinking about what people told me, that time will heal. But I looked at the tyre and realised that if I sat there and did nothing, the air was not going to go into the tyre. I had to do something. In the same way, I had to take small steps to recover from my grief and help myself and my children. That was the turning point."
This was when Nancy signed up for counselling. She also joined Wicare Support Group for widows and their offspring.
Her second turning point was when she asked for forgiveness from her children.
"They were like me - I was cold and angry and didn't want to show that I was vulnerable and grieving. We had been very sociable, but now we were withdrawn as a family."
Nancy conveyed to them that "mummy can cry and not build walls.”
She said, “Children are very forgiving. Over time, the family grew closer and stronger.””
Lesson? Just one, and it brings me back to the “square of miracles” where the leaning tower stands.
Mothers can’t do it alone. If it takes a village, then at the centre of that village are little miracles they experience with their loved ones, in particular, their children.
For Nancy, her three children turned her tears into bridges not walls. Her kids stood in the gap for her after Thomas passed on, and their forgiveness healed the relationship.
Let me end with one of Nancy’s turning points when her tyre burst.
You’d recall she said: “... (as) I looked at the tyre and realised that if I sat there and did nothing, the air was not going to go into the tyre. I had to do something. In the same way, I had to take small steps to recover from my grief and help myself and my children.”
Indeed, the journey of life, healing and restoration is sometimes as simple as pulling ourselves up and taking the first step to, well, pump air into the tyre.
Just as air is not going to go into the tyre on its own, miracles are not going to happen if we ourselves are deflated, empty and broken.
Nancy said she took “small steps to recover” and every step since that day by the kerb has transformed her life and her relationship with her children.
And I am sure this is what Thomas wanted for her and his children, that is, a family (with all their vulnerability and frailty) standing on the bountiful field of miracles whose sown seed is and has always been overcoming love.
Blessed Mother’s Day to all. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment