Dear Aunt Silvia,

I am a young married man with a wife and 3 children. For some reasons I have a problem loving my mother. While my father was a primary school teacher working hard to educate us, my mother used to go to farm and knit sweaters only.

She was a housewife, but we would always walk three kilometres back home from school to prepare our food and then head back to school. We did all the house chores while she was knitting sweaters for her friends.

After that harsh treatment from my own mother, I find it very hard to relate with her many years later. My wife and children have never been to our home since I am not comfortable with my mother. While she knows that I am not close to her because of what she did to my siblings and I she is least worried.

She is getting older and I have an urge to know and love her more but one part of me is restraining me from loving her, deep down it hurts when my friends talk of their mothers with lots of love.

Winan

Dear Winan,

You cannot hate your mother because of her short comings; I am yet to see a perfect human being. Do not translate your mother’s actions into hatred for you, if she hated her children, none of you would be alive today so to speak.

And what makes you think that your father was hard working and the sole bread winner?

Is it just because he used to leave the house very early and come back late? Your mother is being real by not worrying, because she knows that one day you will know the whole truth.

What you call idling and knitting sweaters – was what met your eye- but probably nothing like it. What kind of salary do you think your father was earning if you say he was a primary school teacher then with nine children to educate and look after?

The reason for her to knit sweaters was probably to help with paying the bills in the house, while you thought she was mistreating you.

Just put yourself in her shoes, wake up very early to go to the farm and thereafter find time to knit sweaters to earn that extra penny that your family needed so desperately.

Your mother was probably forced to suffer silently by helping her husband make ends meet and protecting his name; at the same time watching her children suffer by walking long distances to school and come home to prepare meals and do house chores, but then did she have a choice? Maybe not.

Search within your heart and let go of the past. No matter how bad you say your mother is, the fact still remains that she is your only mother and you will not get another.

Let your wife and children visit her so that she can bond with them. Mothers represent God here on earth. If your mother is still not happy with you- you still have a life to lead. Do not be in a rush to judge, history is bound to judge you if you will judge your mother.

Ends