Beloved Mother

It's been two whole years, and my son just got back from college. He has just completed a diploma in business management, but his words don't sound like the words of someone who has just accomplished something. It sounds more like a teenager who has just completed high school and is scheming through different career paths and university admission requirements.

He's had dreams of being an engineer ever since his high school days, but his marks were always too low to meet the minimum admission requirements. So naturally I thought that he had given up the moment he decided to pursue a business-related course. I had no idea how wrong I was because judging by his words he is clearly about to pick up the mantle again. I try to talk him out of it because I don't understand his thinking why doesn't he get a job with his existing qualification ? , why doesn't he further his studies in the same field?, why did he even do a business course if he didn't like it?, does he think his tuition is cheap?!, how long must I support him for ?,when will he stand on his own two feet like a man ?

I ask all these questions, yet he answers each and every single one of them like he had a memo beforehand, " I have no passion for business and I love engineering ", " I studied business because I dream of being an entrepreneur in the engineering industry one day just like Iron Man " , " IF I AM SUCH A BURDEN TO YOU THEN DONT SUPPORT ME ILL SUPPORT MYSELF ILL GET A JOB AND PAY MY TUITIONS ". His words echo through my head like it's an endless tunnel. I decide that its best to leave him to think for himself because its his future at the end of the day and talking to him is like adding berg winds to an area filled with dry vegetation. A few days pass and I decide to support his goal and start looking into colleges that offer engineering, and I find a couple of them where he can enter even with his current marks.

As I'm about to leave my room to tell him the good news I hear a knock on the door. "Come in", I say and to my surprise he steps through the door, closes it, and bold look of determination on his face he proclaims that he is going to upgrade his results so that he can get into a good university. I then take time to show him all the colleges that he can get into with his marks thinking that he will be happy with them but to my surprise and utter confusion he states that he wants to study at the University of Pretoria which happens to be one of the Universities he can't get into. "Here we go again" I say in my head. "Why that one out of all the options, at the end of the day regardless of where a person studies and which institution it is ultimately the same qualification and there are different paths to your goal" I say to him.

My words have no effect on him as he states that he is only interested in that one university specifically. He tells me a bunch of different reasons why he prefers it, but I knew that he was lying the moment he shrugged off the different options despite the fact that they were some of the best institutions in the country for engineering.

It's not that going to that institution will help him in his job application that it is the best for engineering or any other reason. Every single answer he has given me up until this point could not have been further from the truth. So, the only reason he is so interested in that school is because all of his friends go there and they all do engineering? Seriously!! At that point I just gave up even try talking to him out of it. I was so angry that I didn't even want to talk to him, and I was considering cutting him from my finances completely so that he starts experiencing how hard it is to wake up while everyone else is sleeping to go to work in the cold mornings. However, despite all of these things I just discovered about him I still couldn't bring myself to cut him off completely.

It's at this point that I realized that having a pretty face doesn't mean that you are beautiful because how can such a handsome child have such a disfigured heart. He is like a perfectly cooked stew with all the right ingredients, but it just happens to have too much salt. This whole thing just ruined my perspective of him and how I see him. But as they say there are some faces in this world that only mothers can love because despite all these things I bring myself to support him and pay for his tuition so that he can go to the school of his dreams.

Registration day comes and he finally registers. He is very happy to be register and this time around he seems to be taking his studies seriously. He seems very determined to do this as he I see him studying every time I walk into his room. "This time surely he cant fail", I say to myself every time I see him studying. A few days pass and I find out that not only is he studying but he seems to be doing real life applications to everything that he is studying about.

This goes on for a few months until the exams finally comes and I watch him leave to go and write. When he returns home I ask him how he wrote and to my suprise he tells me that the test was hard. This surprises me because I expected him to ace it because of all the time that he spent studying. I eventually shrug off his words and take it as a joke because there is no way that he failed after all that we went through. However I receive the shock of a whole lifetime when his results come out and they haven't gone up or down but they remain the same and no mark goes up or down amongst all his subjects. He gives it to me with a look of disappointment on his face. After this, I decided to leave him for a few days to figure himself out while I prepare a part of myself to here that he is going to try again.

To my surprise he tells me that he is no longer interested in engineering and now wishes to pursue a career in logistics which he does qualify for with his current marks. He explains that he realised that he was just going through peer pressure and a stage of growing up. I thank God in my heart because I never thought that he would come to that realization on his own. This reminds me of when he insisted that I stop helping push him and when I did, he just kept falling and getting hurt until he got it right on his own. I guess the circumstances never really changed, my expectations changed and in a way I and the world made him feel like he needed to have a degree and work a high paying job in order to be somebody.

But in this I forgot that it wasn't the money that made you who you are, it wasn't standing on your own two feet that made you a man, it was your character and heart. So at the end of the day watching him fail didn't just teach him a lesson but me as well. I guess it's true when they say he who waters others shall he himself be watered.