Mama’s Boy
You’re supposed to love your mother, that’s how it is, isn’t it?
The idea is stamped next to your name on your birth certificate on the account that she carried you around her belly on that Disneyland tour and pushed you out of her normal-sized vagina.
Not my mom though, the phrase “I love you, mama” takes flight the minute I open my mouth because of who she is as a person.
Every guy can agree with me on this; set aside your macho-Sylvester Stallone act for a second and ask yourself, who do you string along with you whenever you go shopping?
Mothers are another breed of best friends who we as sons and daughters tend to overlook at every corner except during finals, job interviews, meltdowns, and break-ups.
Yes, Arab moms come with their fair share of ideologies, ‘strict’ rules, difficult upbringings, and straight A report cards; but they’ve got their reasons; PlayStations, Cartoon Network, Gameboys, and World of Warcraft had taken over our worlds, and they had taken it upon themselves to steady the ship and straighten our ‘course’. Her childhood never included a color tv, an air-conditioned room, all the things we now take for granted, or rather, I take for granted, having lived in the United Arab Emirates all my life; but somehow, her motherly instinct, also known as superpowers, kicked in, and she figured out a way to manage all this stuff, albeit she had three kids before me to perfect her craft.
I don’t blame my mom for wanting me to study medicine, or for wanting me to stop stuttering, all she wanted to do is end my suffering the best way she knew how. As frustrating as it was for her, to conjure any thoughts of her little boy suffering or get a call from school about how students and teachers mocked her son, she never took any of that shit out on me.
Her face was the sun and I was her world.
Our culture sets us on a path of ‘respect’ and single-layered love when it comes to loving women, and mothers are the real victims here, they cradle their sons to adulthood, baby them until marriage, and then, they watch them mutate into men that have forgotten their mother’s love.
I was raised to be a better man, a sane man, a loving man, all thanks to my mama.
So many things have happened since I moved out of my parents’ house that have shown me how much my mom loves me, how much I mean to her, and why, in my mind, I’m her favorite - the last point is not up for debate; but one instance has always stuck with me, the day my mom packed scrambled eggs for our long flight to France.
Flying was always an issue for mom, especially when you factor in a husband, four children, and a need to be on top of every single thing. I mean, I was also a big issue; I didn’t eat a lot of things when I was a kid, salads and greens, sauces, ketchup, and vegetables, but my mom had cracked the code - I liked scrambled eggs.
During our 6-hour flight to Marseille, mom woke me up in the middle of the night because I had fallen asleep during dinner service (I wouldn’t have eaten my meal anyways) and told me to open up and eat. Alarmed and confused, I quickly said no, hoping she’d let me go back to sleep, but the stubborn lady persisted, softly telling me to straighten up and eat; however, I one-upped her stubbornness and ‘rudely’ told her that I didn’t want any.
That instance compartmentalized itself into the regret section of my memories without letting me take a closer look at what really happened, and for years, I’ve been shouldering this burden of making my mom go above and beyond because I was a little bitch about almost everything.
A year back, my mom came to visit me in Beirut and we were having poshed-out afternoon tea.
I decided to bring it up in hopes of getting rid of that hunchback, but like every time, my mother’s response put a smile on my face, she giggled saying, “Hay wala shi, habibe”.
