Mom, this one's for you...♥

My mother, she is not a university graduate. She can't speak English as good as all her children. She doesn't have a job, let alone a career. She's just your typical housewife. Tending to her family's needs from dawn till dusk. Everyday. On and on.

My mother grows beautiful orchids in her gardens. She makes sure they're waterred in the mornings and afternoons. She knows when the shoots have roots and need to be put in their individual habitats.

She is the God of our kitchen. We'd rather eat in than out. Since mom's cooking is always the best and the safest to consume. No doubt. All is prepared with sincerity and love.

Her hands are soft. Even though she hand-washes some of our valuable laundry. Yesterday, I just stood and watched in amazement how she peeled some huge cassava roots. She can change cables and repair simple home appliances. She knows what to do when doors locks are jammed. When the toilet's water supply is not working properly. For her, there is nothing she can't do as long as we put our heart and mind to it. My dad? Oh, he'd just ask us to call the handyman. =)

You might think my mom is a hefty woman. With arms like Shiva. Wrong... She is in her mid 50s. A petite Indonesian woman. Fair skinned and quite frail. Half her hair is white. She can have mean headaches and if she gets too tired, she gets sick and usually throws up. We, quickly make her a cup of hot sweet tea when that happens and start massaging her aching head.

In her mid 20's, she brought her 3 children (ages 5, 3 and 1.5) halfway around the globe just so the whole family could live together with dad who was studying in the States. All because her late father, a civil servant in West Sumatra, had 4 wives and she didn't want her children to miss out on their dad's affection, like she herself had.

♥She loves to lie in the VIP spot in front of our TV, watching shows with her children cuddled up near her, though she often dozes off before the show is over =).

♥She loves chatting with her husband in their bed in afternoons waiting for dusk prayer calls or late nights before they fall asleep (i know coz my room is the nearest to theirs).

♥She loves updating her children's love lifes, careers, friendships, experiences. She never thinks of herself, which makes me mad sometimes.

I'm grateful to still have her love♥. And there's nothing a child can do to return such ♥love in equal proportion. It's not fair, huh? But you get to be unfair with your own kids, in turn by loving them unconditionally. There's this saying in Indonesian (where I'm from :))Cinta anak sepanjang galah, cinta orangtua sepanjang jalan.which means: a child's love is just a yard long compared to a parent's love which is as long as the walk of life they go through...