MY MOTHER WAS THE GLUE THAT HELD OUR FAMILY TOGETHER

This short essay will undoubtedly not do justice to the magnanimous person my Mommy was. Raised by her Indian father in apartheid South Africa in the city of Durban, my mom became motherless at the age of 2. She had an arranged marriage to my dad when she was 20, and later relocated to Kenya, where my six siblings and I were all born and raised.

My most poignant memory of my mother is when she asked me a question that was heavy on her mind. I was 33. She was 66.

She had been wondering why one of her nephews, who was successful, handsome and well established in his career as a doctor, was still single. I paused, wondering how I should respond to my darling Indian mother, who didn’t know about my cousin’s partner.

My mom and dad were visiting in 1992, the one and only time they came here to the United States. Those few weeks were glorious for me since she passed away two years later, at the very young age of 68. If she were alive today, she would be 97. I say this so that one gets an idea of the generation she was born into. Back in Kenya and in Indian families, same-sex relationships were not openly talked about at all.

My response to her question about her nephew? “Ba, do you know that he is with Radovan and that they are a couple?” My mom paused for almost two minutes with tons of thoughts going through that brilliant brain of hers. She looked at me straight in the eyes with a tiny grin and deep curiosity.

She listened, and her beautiful soul came through in the most powerful of ways.

Within minutes, my mom had epitomized what she had raised all of us with — the embodiment of love, deep acceptance, non-judgment, fairness and absolute unconditional positive regard.

Her legacy of unconditional love has been left with so many of us since she was a mother to so many.

Indian families live in extended households and my dad, my dad’s older brother and sister-in-law, and my mom were four adults who had 17 children among them. We all consider ourselves as siblings rather than cousins. At one point, a family decision was made to have my mom move to Nairobi with 19 of us so we could go to the better schools in the city instead of in the small town of Machakos. My mom valued education and she single-handedly is the one who inspired all of us, especially the girls, to be educated and have independent thought and intellectual prowess.

As the matriarch, my mother was the glue that held our family together, and she sacrificed being away from her husband for 19 years for the betterment of her children. My dad would come to Nairobi on the weekends, and my mom would have a love glow on her face.

Her values were very clear to all of us — be educated, have compassion, be humble, work extremely hard and give back in the best possible way you can. Be generous, and not selfish. She was one of the most charismatic, mesmerizing, trailblazing feminists in the entire Brahmakshatriya community, which is a specific sect in Gujarat, a state in India. People revered and feared her at the same time. She ruled with an iron fist (aka The Iron Lady) and taught us all to have extremely high standards of excellence. She gave her heart to the whole family (like Mother Teresa) and raised us to honor integrity, honesty and have very high ethical and moral standards. She could be very sharp and strict and could rebuke you, but it was always for your betterment. She expected us to rise to our best selves, and was there for us in every way we needed her to be. As a mother, she was emotionally calm, stable and present and very intuitive and grounded. She was also considered to be the best cook in our community!

My mom’s open-mindedness and her worldview came from the fact that she read both the Daily Nation and the Gujarati newspaper every day. Oh, and Monday evenings were sacred, since that was the night that wrestling was on and we dared not disturb one of my mom’s guilty pleasures!

Since I was so far away from home, I used to shower my mom with Mother’s Day cards starting very early, like midApril. After she passed away in 1994, the loss was so huge that it took me five years before I could enter a Hallmark store during this season.

Today I look at the Mother’s Day cards and truly, truly, truly consider that it was a blessing to have been raised by such a Great One.