(Cross posted at Other Matters)

My mother used to romp in her village near Lahore catching dragonflies, splashing water onto siblings from the tubewell, and runrunrunning along the irrigation paths to the place where she could see the Himalayas covered in snow on the horizon, hundreds of miles to the north. I think of her, long-limbed & skinny, before she filled out into womanhood and peered from behind curtains at the fields she had known, the boys she had played with.

This is not another story of a woman stifling behind burka, purdah, veil. Life is not simplistic, but nuanced. She lived in a rural area, studied, went out in one of the few cars around accompanied by her gentle, indulgent father, and felt protected & cherished – never forbidden, extinguished, silenced.

I am only coming to know her intimately now, in my thirtysomething years, since a ‘heart is a deep ocean of secrets.’ All those selves that have formed her, so many of them are mysteries to me. A friend of mine had a son, & told me – “When he was born, I felt a love I’d never known. And I realized that’s how my parents love me. We don’t love our parents the way they do us, we feel their love & expect it as our due, but we don’t understand it until much later, when we have a child of our own.”

I don’t have children, but a transformation began in our relationship two years ago. I suddenly realized my mother was, and always had been, a person beyond me, not just living through me but having thoughts and desires of her own. Funny, how disorienting that realization was after years of pushing her to be more independent, less children-oriented, more “free.”

Growing up here for part of my life in Freeland to immigrant Purelander parents, I didn’t always value self-sacrifice, devotion, or the hand that holds you back from burning yourself through experience. I didn’t celebrate modesty as a mark of self-confidence, or innocence as something precious that once lost is never regained. I didn’t understand the language of my mother. I was too busy filing those characteristics under Weak, Dependent, Old-Fashioned, Obviously Not Feminist, and especially, All The Things I Will Never Be.

But in that process, I forgot all the things about her that I did want to be. I was so concerned with stamping out what I saw as weaknesses that I forgot to ask questions. Is passivity the same as receptivity? Or patience the same as resignation? Is compromise always a dishonor? Or weakness akin to perseverance? Is protection not different from restraint?

It’s only recently that I’ve come to realize the power of words. The real power. I’ve always loved writing & reading and would come home from the library with armloads full of books for the week. But it is only now that the story of God teaching Adam the names of creation resounds within me. We forge our own reality by defining people, terms, places for ourselves. What you believe (name), is what shall manifest in your life.

One story, perhaps yours if you were to see her from a distance, is that of a girl clad in a chador at puberty, married to a man she had never before spoken to, moved to a land far far away from all she loved, where she experienced great challenges that show in the lines of her face, & the bent of her neck to this day.

Another story, is that of a laughing, smart girl whose father’s friend respected the family so much that he could not but beg her hand in marriage for his doctor son, who then whisked her off to Chicago where she had me & quite nearly froze her toes off in the park one day and almost sparked a race turf war another.

Other tales include a woman who may have never finished college but is one of the smartest, wisest people I know. She sees into hearts and spirits & is gentle with them. She enjoys, respects & is so fulfilled by her role as mother (she is ‘mother’ even to her sons-in-law) , daughter, sister, wife, & active community member that she brings an intentionality & love that sanctifies every act she daily performs. Her suffering has not withered her but has, instead, burnished her. She has fortitude, patience, & a commitment to her relationships in good & bad times, that astounds me & that I humbly realize is far beyond me. She is stronger and more graceful and complicated than I ever imagined or dared to hope. I can only aspire to learn at her feet, under which Paradise lies, in the years to come.

Courage, Love, thy name is Mother…I think my favorite story still is you, in the fields, catching dragonflies, the horizon glowing with distant mountains, and all your past, present, & future bound up within you, like a vast and hidden constellation.