I’ve been meaning to blog on a few other things over the last week and some topics are already drafted. However today the only topic worth blogging about is my mom, my mother, my ma, my mommy, cause it’s mother’s day and she is and has been the most important person in my life. My mom is my hero, my idol, my motivation and to be honest the world “love” doesn’t even come close to describing how I feel for her.
Born in the late fourties, mommy V. has lived a life full of trials and tribulations and not just because she gave birth to me an my brother. The eldest child of a somewhat selfish and narrow minded woman and a progressive communist who spent most of his early life in exile for his beliefs, she had to fend for herself and her younger sister since she was practically a child. Still a child, she left her village near Mesologgi to go to a boarding school run by nuns, to get some skills and training since her parents could not afford school. As soon as she graduated, she moved to Athens where she started working hard at anything that was available, completely independent but very aware of her family ties, history and responsibilities.
With the start of the Junta in Greece and being the child of a communist, she left the country with all her worldly belongings fitting in one small suitcase for Canada and the hope of a better future. Hope for something better, for her and the people she holds close, has always been the moving force in my mom’s life. In Canada she met my father, started her family and truly started her whirlwind of a life.
As long as I can remember and from what I hear from family and friends my mom has been a hard worker, a hero, a giver. She traveled around the world working. Canada, Greece, South Africa, America. She traveled briefly for pleasure too, when life allowed her too. However life was always hard on her. She suddenly lost my sister one summer’s day to meningitis, while on holiday in Greece and has never in her heart truly recovered from loosing her firstborn little girl at 7 years of age. She then became a widow at the age of 36, left alone with pretty much nothing and no one, truly distraught from loosing the love of her life and partner and was left behind with me and my brother, aged 9 & 10 and a multitude of problems to face.
The center of her life has become me and my brother and all our lives everything she has done has always had one goal. The best possible present and future for us two. With her being a hot chick with brains, she had the option and the offers to get remarried, but as she says “I never wanted to bring a stranger into our family, you only had one dad”. Working hard at two jobs, during the days at the office and then looking after the orange orchards which provided the necessary supplement to our income, all she ever thought about has been us. Although money was always very tight she never let us feel in need of anything. Although our dad died very suddenly and we did miss him physically, she has always been there both as a mother and father, giving her whole self to us so that we never felt orphaned. Now that I’m older and in a relationship, I often wonder how she managed to live without a partner, with no dates, practically been celibate for the last 30 years or so?!
She has motivated us in our studies and life. We learned foreign languages, got skills, had hobbies, moved on to further education simply because of her and the sacrifices she has made. She supported both me and my brother while we were at Uni away from home, me in the UK, him in Greece and later in the UK too. She has never been oppressive but has always been the voice of reason and to be perfectly honest, she has always been right!
She is a person of strong ideals and beliefs and never backs away if she is in the right. She fights for her rights [and other people’s too]. She has supported friends and family in difficult moments and situations, without begrudging it. I have never ever heard her gossip the way women [and I occasionally] do. She has nursed old people till they died and given valuable advice to young people when the needed it and asked for it. She never meddles in other peoples lives or ours. She never procrastinates and even now in her very early sixties she works hard, she has targets and goals and strives to meet them.
I am incredibly proud she is my mom. Not that we don’t sometimes nag at each other or argue. We would be abnormal if we didn’t. People who love each other always do. But I hope that at the end of my days when I’m looking back in my life, I’ll be able to say I was half as worthy as my mom. She is one hell of an individual and mother and even being half as good as she is will be tough. Even now that I am in my thirties and thousands of miles away, she is always supporting me and treating me like her little girl, guiding me and advising me [and if I don’t always listen it’s my bloody fault!]
The only regret is that I don’t see her enough since I have lived away for all these years, but as she always says “It’s your life and you’ve got to live it.” I wish I was there today to tell her all this instead of blogging about it. But then you wouldn’t get to know about my super amazing mom!
I love you mom.
just dawned on me that the same way mark passed on his virus to me 3days later, I might have infected everyone @bluestormdesign with it :S
1 hour, 31 minutes ago, from TweetDeck
Follow me on twitterI have a dream that all my websites will one day exist in a Web where they will not be judged by how they look and behave in each browser, because all browsers will follow the same standards and display them the same.
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