By Rachid Acim
By Rachid Acim
Morocco World News
Beni Mellal, May 15, 2012
The second week of May is a lovely week to celebrate. We must stop for a while and think of the past things we did with our moms. We should dance and sing together those motherly hymns we used to hear in the swing. It is a week when mothers worldwide are honored by children, parents and the whole society. But is that sufficient? Not to me.
A mother is a hidden treasure any society can have, a sweet gift from the heavens to us. If she is there, you feel safe to wrestle with life’s challenges. If she is absent or distant, then be ready for trouble. She is an angel in disguise performing domestic tasks in a marvelous way. She will never complain or let you down.
Her daily prayers are a great solace for us. But do we still look up to our moms? Do we still kiss them before we sleep? Or did our wives take over the place and leave us to mourn over those joyful unmatched memories?
It is commonly believed that the success one may dream of lies in the pursuit of what the mother desires. Let her be a thousand times wrong, but never discolor or stain her lovely mood. She educated us and while education was free, the cost was priceless. Every day she cooked up delicious meals for us free of charge, cleaned the house from filth, arranged our bookshelves appropriately and folded our blankets with much dedication.
Also, she has taught us the basics of ethics we need at school; she did not use any reference for that. She is in one word a big school beset with love, wherein graduates have remarkably majored and excelled in various disciplines ranging from literature to science.
Take any outstanding figure: a president, a wise philosopher, or a layman who managed to enthrall the masses in a given art, and you shall find that a mother tremendously contributed to the formation of that beautiful tapestry. She was behind the screen supporting, guiding and always encouraging. Be her Moroccan, Portuguese, German, or any other nationality, the mother is deemed worthy of our respect. She is the source of every love, the key to every problem, an ocean of mercy, empathy, care, self-abnegation we children hardly could recall.
The ancient people were right when they declared; “If the father dies, put your head on your mother’s knee. And if your mother dies, put your head on the threshold.” Her love is the elixir of life. If ever we feel it, then we will never object to her views no matter how silly or ridiculous they may sound.
Unfortunately, few people would stop mulling over those huge sacrifices introduced by their mothers since childhood. They may think that some countable coins or some precious gifts like a golden earring, a new traditional caftan, or a handmade Jellaba purchased from the most expensive malls of the city can cheer the mother up.
How naïve. Our mothers need more than that.
They do not need any gift to be happy. What they need is our well-being, our love, our care and maybe most significantly our watchful eyes as they turn old and gray. That’s how life proceeds. They take charge of bringing us up and we should return the favors doubled, maybe even tripled.
How can we reward them and they have borne much pain to give birth to us. How can we reward them when they have brought many smiles to our faces even when we were in full despair? The holy books praise them for their enormous struggles in life. We are recommended not to shout at them or to speak back to them on any matter however serious it might be. I guess we did shout many times. Lets plead their pardon.
Is it enough to bring some cakes and some fresh beverages to celebrate Mother’s Day? Aren’t we in need of many delightful days like Mother’s Day? This is the least we can do for them. They deserve the best. They are the queens of our hearts. Let’s crown those queens now. After the coronation, let us kiss them and be so grateful to them for what they did.
Indeed, no gift to our mothers can equal their life gifts to us. They are fuels that enable us to do the impossible. They are celestial beings in a human shape. They are lamps enlightening our ways.
Yet, our relationships with them have been corrupted for certain reasons we may be heedless of. Before we get married, we listen to our mothers blindly, answering their needs as any obedient son would. We avoid speaking harshly or rudely to them. Simply, they are our beloved mothers, under whose feet the rivers of paradise run abundantly. There is nothing on earth like a mother’s hug. Have you ever received one? If yes, how did it taste?
Such a situation has terribly changed when we get associated with other partners who hardly could teach us the love of our mothers. There is all the time an excuse that your mother is talkative, hyper-understanding, egotist, jealous, nasty, and incapable of coping with modernity and so on. She should stay in her house.
Really? Some people are blind and follow the impulses of their spouses. They reject their mothers, slam the door before their faces, leaving them to yield alone to agony and disappointment.
A herd of people tried to maintain some moderation, not clinging to either party. It is difficult but that was one stratagem to earn the love of both. The other streams do not see any problem in that. They pack their bags and intend their first home. It is there where they were taught what life is and what it entails.
A mother is a doctor curing patients with no prescribed prescription. Her lap is full of wonders; it imparts affection, tenderness and a magic medicine for all potential diseases, namely headaches.
She showers on us her great care by giving invaluable lessons gratuitously, guiding us on this thorny journey of life. George Herbert, the celebrated Welsh and English poet and the wealthy priest and orator, has once proclaimed that, “one good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters.”
And he was right.
Rachid Acim is a high School English Teacher in Beni Mellal, Morocco. He is a Freelance translator, writer and poet. Rachid is a contributor to Morocco World News. He can be reached at: ([email protected])
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