If I were my mother...

As the first born in my family, I've had to grow up in so many ways, especially to encourage my mother who is a single parent. I had a somewhat happy childhood but my mum's marriage to my step father was nothing but trouble. By the time I was twelve, they had separated about ten times and by the eleventh, I vowed I would not be left behind. In the past, she had left us and my step father would take us to live with his mean mother. I decided to follow my mum who was then a house wife, not knowing what was going to become of us. I had seen enough violence coming from my step father and I was determined persuade my mother to never look back. During the time that my mother was gone, I spent most of my time alone when I wasn't in school. I would visualize a better life and this is how I became a dreamer. I spent a lot of time lying on the grass studying the insects. My favorite was watching the ants come and go and I would imagine they had parents who had sent them to the shops. :) It gave me a lot of comfort and also an escape from my reality.

Encouraging my mother and taking care of my little sister while she was at work became my part time job. I lost myself completely on being her therapist, a teacher and a mother for my sister. Looking back I don't even know where I got the strength to do all that and I was only a child myself. Life became challenging in many ways, I hated not having a father and especially not having his name registered at my new school. When they called our parents names at school I would pause until they called a few more because I didn't want the other students to know I didn't have a father. I got over it with time when I found out I was not the only one with a single parent.

Life changed everyday for the better and we had wonderful times with my mother. Most were conversations after dinner about the miserable past she had, we laughed about it but I always made her swear to never go back. If she was to go back, she would have to go alone. I grew up worrying about my mother and she like every mother, worried about us. She kept comparing me with so and so and wishing I would turn out to be like so and sos daughter. I learned early enough however to say I will turn out better than all of them combined. As the encourager I had grown up to be, I told her not to worry we would turn out just fine. I would tell her about all the dreams I had for my life but I don't think she saw any possibility of them coming true. To her it was impossible to achieve all that.

Till today my mum worries about us but if I was my mother, I would tell myself, my kids have turned out really well and they have achieved most of their goals in life and they are all grown up now and everything is great!