I’ve always heard the saying, “we become our parents as we grow older”.
By: Krystle Jenna Dookoo
Tags: Short Story, Reflections, Parenthood, Motherhood, A Mothers Love

I’ve always heard the saying, “we become our parents as we grow older”. To some, that is the goal, while to others, it is a nightmare to think they will turn into the people who gave them life. As I become older and reflect on my own life growing up, I realize this is not always the case. We don’t always become our parents, in fact, our experiences may even cause us to evolve into a completely and sometimes, an even better person than we thought our circumstances would allow. This account proves that to me. My mother, a loving, tough, compassionate and beautiful soul defied that stereotype to become a woman I can only hope to emulate as I get older.

I remember being told stories about my grandfather, my mother’s father. A man whose blood ran through my veins, though that was all that I had from him, as he died, an accident, or so they say, when my mother was a mere teenager. One particular story that stayed with me is that of him coming home late one night, drunk, loud and very combative. A fact that was made clear when he stormed in the direction of my grandmother’s room, ready to use her and my mother as his punching bag, as he did on most of those drunken nights. That one night however, my grandmother was not in the mood to be battered. With trembling hands, and a hushed but quivering voice, she instructed my mother to remain as quiet as she could as they quickly escaped through the back door into the dark sugar cane field that lay behind their house.

As my grandmother recounted the story to me, her body in the present, but her eyes clearly lost in that painful past memory, she spoke about the tears she so vividly remembered. The tears weren’t hers, but they belonged to my mother. She said they were tears that reflected sadness, fear, brokenness. My mother became closed off, distant, emotionally detached. It was in that moment she began hiding her true feelings, her fears and her insecurities under a tough exterior. My grandmother, quietly admitted that night was when the light from my mother’s eyes went out — a light that would not return until she saw me and held me in her arms for the first time.

She shared those personality traits of my mother as she was growing up, but I could not connect them with the woman I knew who had given me life. My mother was a loving wife, evident to me in the way she took care of her husband, my father. His favorite meals prepped by her hands everyday as he went to work. Alarm clocks that were set so that she would be awake to welcome him home from a particularly long shift at work. She was a doting mother. She quit her job so that she could be there throughout my teenage years. Sure at times, she was tough on me. Back then it felt like she never wanted me to be too comfortable, pushing me to not settle, to always be better. It was tough, but that type of love made me strong. I get the feeling she wanted for me the things she didn’t have for herself growing up.

Looking back now, I like to think that my mother’s broken and traumatic childhood with her parents was what shaped her to become the best mother I could’ve asked for. Her constant love, her words of encouragement and her praise whenever my self-esteem took a nose-drive was never absent. Her voice, her eyes, her arms always made me feel safe. Even when she gave me the tough love and I felt so distant from her, eventually she would sooth me and explain her reasonings for doing what she did. After her mother passed, I could feel her pain in her loss. Her tears silently falling from her face each time I peeked at her watching a photo of my grandmother. I would love to know her thoughts, her regrets, her desires for that relationship with her own parents and her lost innocence. I always believed her disruptive childhood was the catalyst that caused her to become the mother that I needed.

That love and protection I felt from my mom instilled in me a strong confidence in who I am as a person today. When I question myself, I am reminded of what my mother faced as a child and I think of the tears that flowed from her eyes and what her wish might’ve been for her own children. It makes me want to always become better. Not only for myself, but to somehow let her know that night in that dark woods, her tears, which might have been a prayer to God — is answered.