Sentilong Ozukum
Everybody loves stories. I’m no different. I love reading them. I also love writing them occasionally when inspiration comes. Stories help us to understand truth more objectively through the lens of imagination.As people all over the world reflect upon the loveof a mother today, I want to share a couple of stories which move my heart closer to my motherevery time I read them. The first one is from a diary entry I wrote several years ago over a childhood incident. The second one is from a book written by America’s beloved columnist Erma Bombeck and is one of the best stories ever written on the subject. Hopefully, both the stories will remind us that ‘mothers’ are indeed God’s best gift to humanity. Perhaps sometime in the act of creation, God wanted to create something in this world that best expressedHis unfailing love and care for us and He created mothers.
MY MAGIC SHOES
Monday morning.
I’m eleven years old.
Tiffin packed, shirt sparkling, trousers ironed, socks fresh. Hair combed, nails trimmed, teeth brushed. Everything is ready. Except- the shoes. They look as if they have just been pulled down from the attic. I swallow dry spit. The heartless Principalhad pulled me out of the line last Friday at the morning assembly and whacked my butt three times in full view of the whole school.“You come to my school wearing shoes like these again,” he had roared before swinging his arms, “and I’m going to break your leg so that you won’t be able to wear them again.”
It’s my fault. I forgot.
“But you should have told me that you ran out of polish,” my mother stands beside me, wiping away sweat beads from her neck with the back of her hand. It’s a humid July morning.
Yes, I should have told her. Mother had made it very clear ever since I turned ten years old that theresponsibility of keeping my shoes clean belonged to me. She would wash my clothes and even bathe me but I was expected to clean and brush my own shoes.Whenever I would run out of polish, I would report to her and she would buy one. That was the rule. “Even the President of the United States polishes his own shoes,” she’d say. She wants me to grow up into a fine gentleman.
I try the first thing that comes to my mind. I spit on the left pairseveral times and run the brush along the leather. The dirt disappears for a moment only to be replaced by a thick film of greasy substance. I try cleaning the right pair with a wet cloth and it turns grey. I now have bigger things to worry. At least I had an identical pair before I started the experiments. I start panicking. I try everything that an eleven year old is capable of thinking of. I rub them with my towel and it turns black – the towel. Terrified I spit harder and run the brush at a lightning speed praying for a miracle.Nothing works. The clock strikes eight. Terror strikes my heart.
“Hand me the shoes,” mother stretches her hand towards me.
Blinking my eyes in confusion, I surrender them into her hands. I almost believe she is going to wave a wand over my shoes and magically turn them into new ones. Instead she holds them between the fingers of her left hand and walks towards the kitchen. Perplexed, I run after her. She plops the shoes onto the floor, unhooks the frying pan and places it near the shoes in an inverted position. My heart skips a beat. She wets the bristles of the shoe brush with the help of the water filter and runs the brush along the back of the frying pan. And as I watch in complete stupefaction, she starts painting my shoe black, the wet brush moving from the frying pan to my shoes and then back again.
“What are you doing?” I blurt out fighting back tears. “You are ruining my shoes.”
“Just watch,” she smiles and places the painted shoes at the foot of the door towards the sunlight. I wait for the shoes to magically shine as they absorb the sunlight. Nothing happens.
“I’m not wearing those charcoal painted shoes to school!” I blurt out.
She lets out a small cackle and starts rubbing the shoes with a piece of white cloth. And then…Magic! With each movement of her arm, as if by an invisible force, the shoes start to glisten. In no time, they start reflecting sunlight into my eyes like a shard of mirror.
“There you go,” mother places the shoes at my feet. I stand motionless for a few seconds unable to comprehend the perplexities surrounding me. I don’t know whether the magic is in the frying pan or in the sunlight or in the piece of cloth. I love to think that it is in my mother’s hand.
“It’s magic,” I smile and run out of the house with my pair of magic shoes.
THE MASTERPIECE
While the Good Lord was creating mothers He was into His sixth day of “overtime” when the angel appeared and said, “You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one.”
And the Lord said, "Have you read the spec on this order?"
She has to be completely washable, but not plastic.
Have 180 movable parts ... all replaceable.
Run on black coffee and leftovers.
Have a lap that disappears when she stands up.
Have a kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair.
And have six pairs of hands.
The angel shook her head slowly and said, “Six pairs of hands . . . not possible.”
“It's not the hands that are causing me problems,” said the Lord. “It's the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have.”
“That's on the standard model?” asked the angel.
The Lord nodded. “One pair that see through closed doors when she asks, 'What are you kids doing in there?' when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that see what she shouldn't, but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and reflect, 'I understand and I love you' without so much as uttering a word.”
“Lord,” said the angel, touching His sleeve gently, “come to bed. Tomorrow ...”
“I can't,” said the Lord, “I'm so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick . . . can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger . . . and can get a nine-year-old to stand under a shower.”
The angel circled the model of The Mother very slowly. “It's too soft,” she sighed.
“But tough,” said the Lord excitedly. “You cannot imagine what this Mother can do or endure.”
“Can it think?”
“Not only think, but it can reason and compromise,” said the Creator.
Finally, the angel bent over and ran her fingers across the cheek. “There's a leak,” she pronounced. “I told you that you were trying to put too much into this model. You can't ignore the stress factor.”
The Lord moved in for a closer look and gently lifted the drop of moisture to his finger where it glistened and sparkled in the light.
“It's not a leak,” He said. “It's a tear.”
“A tear?” asked the angel. “What's it for?”
“It's for joy, sadness, disappointment, compassion, pain, loneliness, and pride.”
“You are a genius,” said the angel.
The Lord looked somber. “I didn't put it there.”
