Who is this woman you call Mother?

As appeared in MyTake
The Brunei Times -- May 13, 2007

SHE'S the one who mops your brow when you're feverish, prepares your meals everyday, shuttles you to school like Michael Schumacher on caffeine, and sometimes sets down the law like a policewoman. But what do you really know of the woman you call Mum as a person?

Does she have a wicked sense of humour? Is she the life of a party, is she financially generous with family and friends, loaning money out to any and everyone in need? Is she remembered fondly by everyone she has ever met or do people cross to other side of the street when they see her coming?

It's often funny for children to grow up thinking that Mum is a set of things only to find out later that she's more than the woman who is at home all day catering to the family's needs or one who rushes around getting things done and disappears for hours at work.

And sometimes children don't even discover the woman who's Mum -- I didn't for years, since she passed away when I was a teenager, and did only because circumstances took me into her circle of friends from work.

My mum died in 1989. She was the woman I knew who worked odd hours as part of the Malaysian National News Agency, Bernama, had three kids, drove her own car, had a bit of a temper, suffered cats because the children liked them and was close to her siblings. Not much at all, really.

Then I grew up away from the family, in boarding school and abroad, and only had glimpses of her life from my holidays spent with aunts and uncles, where they would sometimes speak of their lives in younger days. I learned how she got into the newspaper business, working first for the Malay broadsheet Utusan Malaysia, where they swear she coined the word andartu to refer to the unmarried older woman, and then moving to Bernama.

Having finished with my formal education, I booted around career ideas and decided to try my hand at journalism too, joining a newspaper for about three years before landing at Bernama.

They were still there, some of my mum's oldest friends, and though they didn't recognise me at first, soon came to know my connection to the woman they had missed all those years. I even found someone who's related to my father in a distant way.

And yes, my mother had a wicked sense of humour indeed. Once on a whim, she filed a story "from the field" about a man eaten by a crocodile, and included quotes from the reptile itself about what had happened. And it almost went out on the wires except for the fact that someone noticed the talking crocodile and realised it was a joke.

She was friendly with everyone, bosses or runaround boys alike, and was generous to a fault with everyone, doling out loans and advice to those in need of assistance. Once she even gave a lift to a heavily pregnant woman and her husband who were trying to get to hospital and had been refused by taxis fearing she'd soil the seats.

I admit it was a bit unnerving to be accosted by people wanting to share their memories, as I could not help being compared with this saint of a woman who could do no wrong.

But then, it was an eye-opener as I realised you could never really know a woman just from the persona she puts on at home -- as a stay-at-home mum she's probably not the same woman who hangs out with her girlfriends, as a tyrannical disciplinarian at home she could be mellow and cool among her workmates.

You can hardly find out about these things by asking Dad, either, as cultural norms dictate that there are many taboo subjects within families, asking personal details about your parents being one of them.

So basically it's down to guesswork and observation, and really, you should take the chance to know your mother, especially on this opportune Mother's Day. Take her out, engage her in a conversation, treat her like a cherished friend — today is a good day as any to begin another level of relationship with her, your mother, especially before it's too late.