kata kama: Thoughts On Mother's Day

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Thoughts On Mother's Day

From the day I breathed my first to the day she breathed her last, my mother and I were never close. It was fated that we we not meant to be, but that didn't mean I had loved her any less.

Throughout my childhood, I had referred to her as Kak Nor. I never knew her as anything but my eldest sister, the first child of the woman I called Mak.

I must have been 10 when it finally dawned on me that Mak was actually my grandmother and that Kak Nor was the one who gave birth to me. Such revelations naturally took a lot of adjusting to, and I was a confused child for a while.

If coping with the transition from Kak Nor to Mak was tough, acknowledging the elevation of grandma's status from Mak to Opah was even tougher. I dealt with the situation the only way I knew, by burying myself into books.

My mother was a petite woman who had managed to maintain her slight figure well into her 50s. Size-wise, I am no nowhere near, for I take after my father's side of the family; the Megat women were relatively tall, big-boned and sturdy.

The women on my maternal grandpa's side of the family, being Kelantanese, were a resilient lot, that much I can say. Thus I am not surprised to share the traits; fiercely protective of the brood, independent in thought and deed, with none of us suffering fools gladly.

Despite a couple of hiccups along the way (the divorce from my father being one), Mak had had a fairly uneventful life. She remarried, produced 5 daughters, and remained in the blissful union for almost 40 years, until Bapak's demise in the late '90s. Mak left us four years ago, age 73.

"May Allah swt bless you with the best there is, Mak. We love you and miss you; the pain never heals." Al-Fatihah.

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