By Nincy Mariam Mondly
"Adam and Eve heard the voice of God walking about in the garden. Trembling with fear they hid between the trees. Then thundered God's voice , 'Where are you?', she paused to look at me. I bet I appeared as fear-stricken as Adam's and Eve's sketch in the Children's Bible that she was reading out to me, taking me from one place to another with each story. But, drifting into sleep I would always come back to our own room where I cuddled next to my mom, as she sat beside me on the bed. With the warm afternoon light filling up the room, I lay cozied up in the blanket of my mother's presence, with Bible stories that were painting vivid pictures in my little mind.
Years thereafter, I still had her next to me, but
in a very different room. The inpatient room had one recliner bed with side-rails which could be pulled up when needed and a smaller bed for the bystander. Every night before sleeping, mummy would pull up the rails so that when I am asleep, my spastic legs won't make me fall down. I would watch her as she moved the smaller bed closer to my recliner bed and settled down to sleep. Most often I would also fall asleep immediately. But some nights, I just waited for the lights to be put out. In the dark, believing that no one was watching I would cry silently but freely. With the majority of my body paralysed following a spinal cord injury, there seemed to be very few things I could do freely. Although not the best among them, sometimes I just had to cry it out. But no amount of tears seemed to satiate my pain. However, during such crying spells, if the faintest of my sniffles managed to escape my desperate attempts to keep it to myself, it made sure to wake up mummy. She would then call out my name softly. Her presence always pulled me out of the downward spiral that my thoughts so easily and frequently took me to.
No, the picture wasn't and still isn't so grim.
An ambitious 18 year old teenager leaves home to pursue higher education but returns in a wheelchair with a lot of dreams and hopes snuffed out. Now, in a teleserial, this would be among the most melodramatic scenes, where the mother beats her breasts in agony. Fortunately, although my life may have at times felt like a horror movie it never became a teleserial. Even when trauma hit our door, my home remained as the sweet home it always was.
At home, the bed became my newly found niche. Even when I missed being my old self at home, my family made every attempt to
make home feel like home for me, or to put it simply, home became wheelchair friendly.
In all these years, mummy's creativity became most evident as I saw her alter the home decor to let me not just survive but thrive in these confines. But what lit up the room now, was her humour. It is the same humour which let us laugh together when she called me an astronaut, as I lay in the first hospital bed with neck collar and casts on my arms and leg or which made us giggle loud enough to make nurses rush to the room (thinking that it's an emergency) as we played candy crush together late night. She has taught me to take life more lightly even when life itself may have wrecked your weighing balance.
There are these old yellow photos of my mother in which, at each corresponding stage of mine, there has been this stark resemblance between us. As a kid I used to envy my sister for she got my father's fairer tone and sharper features. To think that I would grow into a broader and rounder figure like mummy would make me exercise harder. But today if someone tells me that I look like mummy when she was my age, with these nerd glasses that we have in common, I feel proud. But beyond the looks, when it comes to being this brilliant brave woman that she is, I ask myself do I have it in me?
If it were not for my disability, I would not have been in these rooms of my life with my mother. Every night as she kisses me goodnight, the moment becomes all and only about one thing- the warmth that is her love. As I close my eyes to sleep I know the room in me will always have her.
By Nincy Mariam Mondly
留言