I Lied About My Mother Until I Discovered Her True Identity | by Sabrina Sultana | Story #247

Not for any social formality. I am writing this today out of my own guilt, my negligence, and the long regret of not loving my mother enough.

I had wanted to write about my mother for many years. It is not that I never did. Back in school, in classes seven, eight, or nine, whenever we were asked to write an essay about “Mother,” I would write very carefully and beautifully.

 But today I realize that none of those writings truly contained my real mother.

Ashamed to Tell The Truth About Mother

I used to write that my mother was a doctor, sometimes a teacher, sometimes an engineer. Back then, I thought this was how a mother should be introduced — with a respectable identity society would admire and be proud of. And because my mother was just a simple housewife, I felt ashamed to write that. Today, when I remember that shame, I feel deeply remorseful about myself.

When a Woman Becomes a Mother

I’ve heard people say women are greedy. I do not know about others, but when a woman becomes a mother, she truly becomes very greedy. During winter, after requesting my father many times, he would bring molasses from the market, and my mother would make steamed rice cakes for us. We would eat happily while she quietly watched us.

In her eyes, I could see a strange greed — the greed to see joy on her children’s faces. I love dried fish very much. Even though my father disliked it completely, my mother would still ask him to buy some from the market just for me. She would cook it with great care, and when we ate with happiness, a deep satisfaction would appear on her face. There again, I could see that same greed.

 She would dress us in new clothes and keep looking at us over and over again. If we did well in exams, her joy knew no bounds. I did not understand it then, but now I do — mothers are truly greedy. But all their greed exists only for their children’s happiness, comfort, and well-being.

My mother is a very ordinary person. She cannot read. Perhaps she will never read this story, nor even know it exists. If I hug her and say, “Mother, I love you very much,” she would probably feel shy and laugh, saying, “Why are you saying such things?”

When I was little, she never pressured me to become a doctor or an engineer. Her dreams were surprisingly small, yet more tender than the grandest dreams in the world. She only wanted me to comb my hair neatly every day and tie it tightly into braids. She wanted her daughter to look clean, organized, and beautiful. A person who can be happy with such tiny dreams must be unimaginably simple, pure, and selfless.

Discovering My Mother's True  (and Greatest) Identity

Today I understand that a mother’s identity does not lie in her profession, her degree, or her social status. Her identity hides in the sleepless nights spent checking her child’s fever, in quietly giving her own share of food to her children, in that miraculous ability to understand everything without words. The mother whom I once felt ashamed to describe as “just a housewife” has now become the greatest identity of my life.

Mother, every essay I wrote about you in the past was a lie. Today, for the first time, I am writing the truth — you are not a doctor, not a teacher, not an engineer. You are simply my mother. And within this word “simply” lives my entire world, my roots, my shelter, my love, my heaven.

Mother, among all identities in this world, this one identity of yours is greater, purer, and more honorable than them all. You are simply my mother, and to me, there is no identity greater than that.