let me be your mother
There are many kinds of love. But one thing’s for sure — nothing could top off a mother’s love. It is of no exaggeration when I say that in order to feed her starving child, a mother would be willing to slice off her skin for her child, despite the pain and the hunger she also felt.
From famous novelists to painters, not one of them didn’t portray in their work the tenderness of a mother’s embrace. A painting in particular caught not only my attention — but it also caught my heart and squeeze it in agony whenever I looked at it. The painting is called Anguish from an artist named August Friedrich Schnek.
There’s no need for me to explain this painting further, as its title and the image shown above already presents the answer.
It’s hard to imagine how much pain the mother sheep felt, but we could see a glimpse of it from her pained face and the exhale of warm breath from her mouth — this breath probably carried her anguished wail from losing her lamb. What surrounds them were a flock of crows, but while some of you might thought that they were grieving alongside her, let me remind you that since ancient times, crows have been the symbol of death.
Despite the pain from losing her child — one could see her left foot placed in front of her child — protecting the lamb’s carcass from the crows, who stood watch as they patiently wait for the mother to go away, so that they could feast on the carcass.
This painting tugged my heart strings and disturbed my being more than I thought a painting could mentally, physically, and emotionally move me. But above all of these, it has also made me realize some things. One of them is that the mother sheep, who placed her hooves in front of her child to protect the lamb from death, bore some similarities to how my mother has also been protecting me from everything from the very beginning, despite the coldness of our reality.
A mother’s love is the most pure and self-sacrificial.
Yes. That’s indeed a fact.
While I sleep in a comfortable bed to get ready for school, my mom would stay up late at night and iron my clothes so that I would look clean and presentable. While I was deep in the comfort of my dream land, my mother would wake up with just five hours of sleep to cook for my breakfast.
While I eat the deboned fish she placed on my plate, her fingers on the other hand would ache from the fishbone that unexpectedly pricked her. While I enjoy the comfort and luxury that money brings to me, she on the other hand would count the money she got from working overtime. And while I could lay down in bed the whole day, she on the other hand had to get up early and prepare for work just to provide for me.
And when I feel down for not being able to surpass the standards I had for myself, she would comfort me by saying, “May next time pa. Galingan mo nalang next time.”
While she herself doesn’t have a perfect childhood, she worked her body to give me one.
I have seen and heard some that say that they’d choose their mom as their mother over and over again if reincarnation does occur. But I, on the other hand, do not want her to become my mother again.
If second life exist mom, let me nurture you under my wings until you’re ready to fly. When that time comes, let me protect you from the swarm of death.
Let me be your mother.
