On, the path of life, translated…
That served dish of sunny-side-up that people eat often rarely shows up at my supper table, because it’d always, reminded of my rebelliousness toward my own mother.
In 1960, my mother who was nineteen, started her hard marriage in a poverty-stricken small farming village, with my older brother and I coming. My older brother was a premature, the midwife told that he must be taken to the incubator in a hospital, but the elders told, that “god can’t save a child who is meant to die”, they’d not wanted to spend the money, but thankfully, my eldest brother survived, miraculously.
To take care of my developmentally delayed older brother and me, my mother pawned all of the gold jewelries that my maternal grandfather gave to her in secrecy, she’d also, gone against the elder’s objections, insisted on moving into town, to find work.
We’d passed through a couple of peaceful years in the town, as my eldest brother and I were in middle school, our family was once again, under economic duress. One morning as I’d gone into the kitchen, my mother was packing the eggs into my eldest and youngest brother’s lunchboxes, but at noon, as I lifted the lid of my lunchbox open, all I saw were the pickles and the vegetables.
illustration from UDN.com
Several days later, I had a fight with my mother, I’d screamed aloud at her, “Do you think I’m stupid? You’d played favorites, my eldest brother had the sunny-side up and I had none!” and immediately afterwards, I’d, regretted, even as I was only thirteen, I’d understood, that my mother’s taking the extra hart toward my eldest brother, because he was weakened, and that he’d fallen ill often.
My mother was stunned, not knowing how to defend herself, she’d cried and explained, “There was only an egg left, I didn’t mean to be unfair to you!”, and her tears sent me into a panic, but being stubborn, I couldn’t, apologize, so I’d, turned and left the kitchen. Two years later, I’d graduated middle school, I’d tested into the public high school and a public technical high school, and didn’t know which one I should choose, and that was when my mother told me her story, told me, to put myself first.
Being the eldest daughter, she was very fitting, and well-behaved as a young child, and my maternal grandfather loved her, but no matter how hard she’d worked around the house, in the fields, my grandmother only loved her only son. My maternal grandmother who’s mean and stingy, when my mother was married, toward how my grandfather wanted to buy the beds, and the jewelries for her, she’d, denied it, only bought a water bottle, along with some other household appliances; and because of this, my father’s side of the family, belittled my mother; and my maternal grandmother didn’t even give my mother’s wages from before she was wed back to her when she got married.
“I’d hated your grandmother, but, a year after I was married, she’d died of a sudden condition, and, we’d, only shared a short twenty years of affinity, we didn’t even have the chance to make up.” my mother told, because she knew how it’d felt like, to be mistreated because she’s a female, she’d, vowed to treat all of her young equally, ton not play favorites like her own mother had done.
My mother passed away at seventy, she had, treated the three of us, all the same, back then when I’d not followed the path of girls out of farming villages to study in the technical high school programs, and, started working right after high school graduation, she’d, accepted it, that was why and how, I was, able to become, the very first college student in the family, and, the certificates of achievements covered up the walls; she’d allowed her children to make their own decisions in their separate lives, and only stated, “if you start well, you’ll, end well.”
Three years ago, as I finished with my mother’s funeral, the following morn, my son asked me to make a sunny side-up for him, as I’d told him this part of my childhood, I started, crying hard, and my son, with his eyes red too, “Wow, there’s, the touching story to this sunny side up”, he’d stated, that grandma had, treated everybody equally, that even though he was her maternal grandson, but he knew, that his grandmother, loved him, just the same.
And so, this, is how the fairness of a mother in treating her own children impacted them for life! This woman didn’t understand WHY her mother only made her eldest brother the eggs, and called her mother out, and, as her mother explained it, she’d felt bad, and, this still showed, how the trials and the hardships of one’s own life, has a lot to do with how a person’s personality traits are, shaped.