I never felt poor growing up. I never felt that constant, overwhelming feeling of drowning in my predetermined existence. Coming from a single-parent family, that would seem like a feat. But my mother - like all mothers made up of pure magic - made sure my brother, sister, and I never went without our basic needs. Not just that, our (nearly) every want. She never made us feel like there was something we couldn't have. Like things were out of our grasp because money had been tight. Because money would forever be tight, now that our father was out of the picture. She was effortless. A portrait of poise and strength. But, truth be told, our father always seemed like he was more of a problem than a solution to financial woes. Any woes, truthfully. To this day, he's stumbled and fallen along the way to "stability". He's been unable to keep steady employment or a steady household. But none of that registered while I was little. My mother protected us from him. Maybe because she knew that he didn't know how. He would never really know how to.
She raised us to be strong, decent human beings. To pass out kindness like it was our only form of currency. To be forgiving and understanding in all things. To strive to be better than your circumstances. To never let things like money or fear or worry or situation keep us from doing things that mattered the most to us. She taught us to love and never hate. To always see the positives in our life. She's the one who taught me to put others before myself (something I really struggled with in my teenage years, and probably a little even now). And to help out others when they need help, even (especially) when they're too scared to ask.
I look at her in awe. I look at her and think, 'how can such a small creature like her love so big? How can love like that cost nothing to her?' I feel like I'm nothing like her most of the time. She's a saint and I'm wrong in so many ways. But that never mattered to her. I know it never will matter to he. My pride and stubbornness cloud my vision. But I never stop trying to be like her. Being a grown up is hard, and I never realized that growing up. Maybe because she always made is look so easy. She made it seem like it was nothing. She never showed traces of loneliness or sadness or weariness even though I know she felt all of those things and more. Because everyone does. Because you can't not feel like the world is going to crush you at times, when you're raising three kids alone. And sometimes, I forget that she feels things. Supermom feels feelings, guys!
Part of being older is seeing things that you never noticed before. And now I can see. I can see it in the way she sighs. I can see it in the distant look she gets when things are quiet. In how she shakes and constantly checks her phone when she hears my brother is having a rough go of things. I can see it in the way she cracks her neck when she's really, really stressed about something. In how you can tell, you can just tell, she's silently praying, fiercely hoping, that none of us will ever have to go through what she did. That's when I know. That's when I know being Supermom isn't easy. It's hard and there's no one there to pat you on the back and encourage you when things seem impossible. Nothing in her world was effortless or simple. But she always tried. And she never once failed us. She never failed me. She gathered her composure and put on a happy face for us. She constantly battled the will to give up and fall apart, like everyone expected her to do and she did it for us. To protect us from a life she was forced into living. Because my father let her down. Because my father let us all down. And now, countless years later, she doesn't hold anything against him (even though no one would exactly blame her if she did). Because my mom, my mom that's made up of pure magic, is a saint. She's everything I want to be when I grow up.
