A Hero in My Eyes

Motherly Instincts

She sits there all of the time, her eyes stoically staring at space, as if to signal she’s in deep meditation. Her face is beautiful, but when you look underneath you can see years of tragedies, the kind that would make ones’ self grow. Her hair falls gently around her feature creating a dark brown frame with faint golden streaks. Her eyes, stand out of the frame and have a faint purple halo beneath her caramel coffee eyes from restless nights of mothering. Mothering and motherly instincts is something she doesn’t lack.

“Don’t eat hard candy!” she would holler at us whenever we picked up any candy that was hard. I never really understood what was with her over protectiveness. I asked her, and just like that she slipped into some sort of trances; the kind you would see in television shows when the character is having a flashback. My brother, the one who has had his fair share of incidents with food, was the one towards whom she was more protective over. She would constantly be watching him eat, and I mean this in the most literal way. I wasn’t alive then, but my mother told me the story anyway.

She was home alone, having to watch over my brother and sister like an angel would a newborn. She had a gut feeling, I guess you could call it a mother’s intuition that struck when she handed him the round candy with multicolored swirls.

“Don’t jump,” she cautioned him knowing it would happen anyway. She waved it away with a hint of regret and returned to her tornado-wrecked closet. Her eyes darted across the room when she heard the loud thump, followed by the flailing of the plum colored child’s arms. Everything seemed to have slowed down, except her brain; it ran like a horse in a giant meadow, galloping like thunder. She glided through the room and saw that the candy was too far from her reach. She didn’t give up though, she knew what she had to do, not matter what, she had to save that life. She took the child’s head into her arms, cradling it softy and reached for the candy.

An unearthly sound escaped the toddler’s mouth, like an air pocket that was trapped within his lungs. The both embraced as diamond droplets streamed down their cheeks. That night, she curled into bed with her child, tears still dripping as they slipped into a much needed state of unconsciousness. I saved a life, a life that if I had not been educated might’ve slipped right through my grasp she thought. Words weren’t enough to describe the day she had, all she had was the experience that she wished she would never have to relive, she’s a hero to me, she’s my mother.

As she recovered from the sudden surge of memories, her eyes fixed on mine. The edges of her mouth turned upwards into a proud smile. Proud of herself for saving her son, proud because she taught me a new life lesson, one that I certainly hope I’ll never use. I wondered who’d made her this way, who had taught her these things.

As it turns out, it was somehow programmed into her brain, her mother’s brain. Wow, I thought, what an amazing feat, to save your child without a single clue of what you were doing, just relying on your instincts. I love her for everything, for giving birth to me, for saving my brother. I simply love her.