Her children

I am thirty-seven years, yet I love sleeping with my mother. When I visit them, I take this sleeping arrangement a luxury. One night, I confide on her about the anxiety building in my chest, the pressure of getting married. I know I am not getting any younger, but I am not also in a hurry. I told her, if only marriage is just buying a medicine in a pharmacy nor picking a flower in a garden I could have done so long ago. My mother used to laugh when I tell here this, but perhaps as I grow older, she became anxious as well. She believe that a woman's happiness is marriage and children. She jokingly said, “i was happy having you and your siblings even though you were difficult to attend to”.

My mother said “melancholy is a situation that passes in one’s life from time to time. Others feel it for a longer period while others thinks that it will just come and go”. She told me story about her aunt, a figure who made a huge difference in her life. She was the person, who influenced her to finish her studies, and dreamt to become a teacher. My mother said, "when she died part of me also died including the dream of finishing my studies. Others say that I should have continued and make my parents' proud, but at that time, I just do not have the courage”. But she learned that woman has to be strong, independent but must submit to the standards of society. She was referring of course to marrriage and children.

My mother describe her aunt as a silent woman and sometimes in the midst of their laughing and giggling she just smiles and stares lovingly at them. She was an accomplished woman at the age of 16, she finished grade six and she became a good teacher which was acceptable in her time. She was praised by her ability to handle rude and unruly children. She was also good in number and fluently speak english which is considered a great asset during their time. She was also known to be strong and independent.

My mother shared that her aunt longed to be a wife and a mother but, she never found a man nor the other way around that she has strong feeling of love. At that time, marriage was arranged for economic prosperity or family friendship. She defied this norm and stood her ground to choose the man she will marry. However, men were not strong as her. She had few relationship that flourished for a year or two but never ended in marriage, this desire turned to be a nightmare. It became a burden for her, she thought that maybe she is not good enough and even came to conclusion that arrange marriage is indeed the best way to get married. As her younger siblings started to get married the pressure has doubled, crashing her mental and emotional stability. The constant bickering of her cousins and siblings about her becoming spinster, which is taboo, has lowed her self-condidence. When she was thirty years old, she bowed down and got married to a man arranged by her parents. Her marriage was a loveless, but she had grown to love the man that he gave him a pet name “my sun”. She understood her circumstances, she accepted it positively. She became a devoted wife.

However, married for five years, they never had a child. Here hopes and positive disposition was dampen and their was constantly longing. There was a time when she cannot dine with her husband and pretended to be busy. Looking at her husbands eyes made her guilty and useless. On those years, she endured the the remarks of others as a barren woman.

One day she found out that her husband was having an affair with a younger woman. She was devastated and cried every night in her sleep. She never told her husband that she knew the affiar. Instead, she focused on enhancing her crafts on teaching, and helping her husband in farming-planting various vegetable that brought their family economic stability. Her silence through the years had brought her pain, anger, doubt to herself and at some point hatred. But her husband was affectionate and loving that she planted in her mind that her husband love her.

In the 1o^th year of their marriage, her husband's mistress died in child birth. Her husband asked her if they could adopt the children. She conceded to adopt, not only one, but three children. The children gave her new hope and purpose. She became a good mother. Her anger has dissipated and she came to conclusion that it was a blessing. She waited for the confession of her husband and was willing to forgive but it never came. She never understood why she never confronted him.

After two two years, her husband died. She raise the kids alone. She took jobs such as baby sitting, farm hand and trade fruits apart from teaching. As a single mother, my mother was proud of her. She never complained. She tended the children with love and care. On her death bed, she told my mother, her confidant that the three children despite the circumstances of their parentage, they were her happiness. She kept this secret for years, to keep her husband's names untarnish. She does not know if others knew. My mother's aunt never regretted adopting the children and her grudge to her husband was long gone. My mother understood because back then, children are precious and symbol for a husband. My aunt died happily, cause in the end her husband, her “sun” cherished her and gave her children. Her children who are my uncle and aunts are happily married and are successful in their chosen careers.

Mother's aunt said, “Everyone has moments of tremendous longing for something different to happen. A moment where we want that hands of clock will move fast, time to freeze for us to savor the moment, time to travel back from the past and repeat the memories and a time to just let go. But one thing is certain, when we accepting and understanding of the circumstances we find love and happiness”.