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MAMA

The way I walk, with my body slightly tilted to the right and my head upward in a proud stance holding a resting bitch face, may seem peculiar until you meet my mother. I get from her also my uneven smile, my zero eyesight, my laugh, my body and my life. I can draw up a very short list of women who would give me a part of their lives like my mother does. There are also a few decades between us, a few fights and unconditional love. There is not enough English alphabets to explain my love for her.

It was not always like this. There was a time we went days without meaningful conversation, when I thought she was done teaching me life's lessons, but she kept loving me; Through my weird puberty, my confused adolescence and she still did when I brought my first girl home. She walked away from all her ideals for me and she has played the role of mother and father to my little brothers. All these things she has done with not a single groan, with the focus and competence I hope I inherited from her. I could be the strongest woman on earth, but my mother, she would always be my anchor.

There are others who have raised me through the years; There is Cee, when I was ten years old and freshly in boarding school, who showed me how to wear my hair long and own my self. There is Jt who held me together after my first heartbreak and is my second mother. Then there are my elder sisters who are mothers to adorable children, who raised me first, and raised me well. Last but not least are the women who hid behind corners and snitched on the goings and comings of unconventional visitors who popped in while my mother was at work; these ones taught me stealth. 

This is a day set aside for mothers, who bring you cut up fruit spontaneously (inserts meme), and those you only equate to the comfort of your bed(amen, Drake). But it is also a reminder that we need to do better by them everyday. I say this with a long island ice tea chilling beside me(my hypocrisy), but I will do right by mine, always.

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