My Mother Is a Lioness
We learn something precious from mothers who love and fight without ever giving up.
“After my brother’s diagnosis, most people we knew expected Mami to sit in the corner and cry, like a turtle pulling its head inside a shell, to do nothing while the disease slowly weakens my brother’s immune system.”
When my brother was 19, one early morning, he was lying in his bed—unconscious. His face was clammy. And he didn’t hear us shouting his name.
And I—I froze. Years later, every time I remember this moment, I stop breathing. I can’t believe I didn’t run to bring him sugar. I knew what to do, and yet I stood frozen, while my only brother needed me to save him.
But my mother, Mami, was in shock just like me, and yet she flew and brought him sugar in seconds. I remember that her face had no tears when she gently placed the sugar in his tongue, when she watched his face and waited for the sugar to get in his system—and for my brother to recover from hypoglycemic shock (low sugar levels in his blood).
It was only after he gained consciousness, minutes later, that she dropped on the floor of his bedroom and she allowed her tears to come.
My brother was diagnosed with Type I diabetes at 17. But diabetes had no chance to make him weak against Mami’s love for my brother. After the diagnosis, my brother suffered from diabetes complications. When he took insulin injections through his thigh every morning and night, Mami treated him as she always did.
With love that strengthens in tough times.
When she could not find comfortable shoes—most diabetic people have sensitive feet—she searched every corner of the city. And she did not return home until she found what she was looking for. When he suffered from migraines every two weeks, she went to every specialist looking for answers. When a simple cold sapped my brother’s immune system and he had to stay in bed for a week, every two months, she took a leave of absence from her bank job to stay with him, telling her bosses, who refused to give her a leave of absence to go to hell. When ketone deficiency worsened his condition and he vomited in the bathroom like every other day, she stayed with him on the cold floor of the bathroom until his stomach had no more. When he had to be hospitalized for three days and nights—because his sugar level was over the roof—Mami stayed by his side, refusing to leave him, even for a second. When doctors could not explain why his sugar level could not be controlled, she promised herself she would become an expert on how to treat Type I diabetes. She bought books, magazines, and consulted health professionals in and outside of Ethiopia. She sold her home—a home where my brother and I grew up—because of medical bills.
After my brother’s diagnosis, most people we knew expected Mami to sit in the corner and cry, like a turtle pulling its head inside a shell, to do nothing while the disease slowly weakens my brother’s immune system. But they didn’t know Mami. She was and is a lioness. She had a smile for everyone, and she got along well with all our neighbors. For some reason, they thought that was all she was. They didn’t know that behind her smiles lurked ferocity and death-like anger to protect her children. The lioness in Mami lurked behind her smiles—which everyone compared to the morning sun, which made them assume that she would never be angry—who would do anything and everything to protect her son.
The moment her friends and neighbors started labeling her son as “the sick one,” Mami stood in front of them and demanded they NOT label her son as the disease. He has a health condition, he is not the condition, she told them in a tone bridled with anger.
Today, my brother lives in the United States. By looking at his fit body, no one can tell he has Type I diabetes. He exercises. He takes his insulin regularly. He is conscious of what he eats. He doesn’t drink alcohol. Most importantly, he is not tucked away from the world, cowering under the weight of the lifelong disease, where he could protect himself and watch his sugar level the whole day, praying it does not go up or down. He is thriving, working in the IT industry—which has been his dream since he was a teenager. His job requires him to be focused and is stressful most of the time. But my brother does not give up, and he will not give up. How can he when he didn’t think he could fight this complicated and terrible disease, but our mother fought for him when he couldn’t, when he didn’t know how, when she taught him how to fight?
People ask him, all the time, how he fought a disease he did not ask for.
He tells them, Mami did not give the disease a chance to weaken me.
That is what love does. It barges in when something unexpected, something painful, tries to take away your loved one.
“What you do for your loved one when the storm strikes is what matters.”
When I was a teenager, when Mami and I walked to my school, anyone who tried to make fun of me or took advantage of me had to pass through Mami. One time, this guy tried to initiate a conversation, an unrequited conversation. I was 13 at the time. Seeing that I was ignoring him, he insulted me. Mami ran back to this guy and grabbed him by his collar and told him that if he repeated his insults and tried to make conversation with me again, he would suffer.
I love the strength inside Mami. The perfect watch-over. The rage, the ferocity, the death-like anger that lurks behind her love for me. To protect who she loves.
When I was in 9th grade, I was required to take language classes. In my lunchtime, I took a French class at a nearby language school away from my regular school. Mami came all the way from her work to eat lunch with me while I was taking that French class. She knew I was shy, and I didn’t have friends back then. Even though the long distance from her workplace to my school exhausted her, she came anyway, every day.
There is love in every effort she made to be there for me. There is love in every word she said to me to encourage me to speak up, to be a brave girl. There is love in every step she took to give me generous love. There is love in every smile she flashed every time she saw me. There is love in her providing me and my brother with every book we wanted, every pen, every pencil, every cloth, and every little thing we wanted.
I’m thankful to God and beyond grateful that I can call Mami and hear her voice, that I can go to her house and hug her, that I can watch her when she makes my favorite food in her kitchen, gomen with kocho, that we can talk—just the two of us—for hours, and in those hours everything in the world retreats to the background. Everything. Decades after my teenage years, I still remember Mami’s love in the way she showed her love—the forgiveness for a mistake I made, the worried look on her eyes when I was late arriving home, the lingering hugs, the intimate conversations we had in our special walks.
We learn something precious from mothers who love and fight without ever giving up.
When your loved ones go through hard times, call out every strength from your inside to be there for them.
This is what I learned and I keep on learning from Mami: you don’t whisper you love someone and hope the universe does not give you any struggle. If you say you love someone, if you say you are someone’s everything, fight for your loved one like your life depends on it. Like a mother does for her child. What you do for your loved one when the storm strikes is what matters. The action you take when disaster strikes is what matters.
Do you love like the lioness inside every mother who loves her children? Are you the perfect sheepdogs? Do you watch over your loved ones?
If rage, ferocity, and death-like anger do not lurk behind all your affection and love, you do not love. Because the thing that shows that you love—when struggle and pain ingress themselves in the life of someone you love—is this ferocity that will not allow you to sit in the corner and do nothing, while that someone you love needs you.
Mami is my hero. My lioness.
I thank God every day for this beautiful, wonderful, loving, and powerful woman who is my mother.
And I think of Brian A. Bendall’s poem about a mother’s love titled ‘No Charge’
I’ve tried to write so many times,
But it’s been hard to say in rhymes.
I’ll try once more and hope you’ll see
Just what your love has meant to me.
Thank you for your pain at birth
That brought me to my life on Earth.
Thanks for all the times you spent
For cuddles and your nourishment.
Thank you for the stories read
As I lay cozy in my bed.
Thanks for your enlightenment
To solve new mysteries life had sent.
Thank you for the cures and care
When sickness caught me unaware.
Thanks for tucking me in tight
And kisses on my head, “Good night.”
Thanks for comfort when I cried
And tissues used for tears you dried.
Thanks for courage to go on,
To see from night, a day will dawn.
Thanks for your help with school
And teaching me the Golden rule.
Thanks for praise when I prevailed
And understanding when I failed.
Thanks for parties that you gave
And birthday cards I tried to save.
Thanks for meals I loved so much
And baking skills that few could touch!
Thank you for your help to write
My stories you helped bring to light.
Thanks for helping talents surface
That made me see my life had purpose.
Thanks for tears when I left home,
So I could make it on my own.
Thanks for tears when I returned
For visits that you long had yearned.
But now ….
Your life I loved has run its course.
For time will take us all by force.
Your love for me, not kept inside,
And no conditions were applied.
So, thanks for all things, small and large,
Your love saw fit to do ….. No charge.
P.S.
A reader asked me for my favorite essays on the love of a child for a mother and a mother for her child. These two are my favorites:
The Love Of My Life by Cheryl Strayed (Even though it has been years since I read it, this haunting essay is still one of my favorite essays on a daughter’s love for her mother. I can’t read this essay again without tearing up.)
On Dying, Mothers, and Fighting for Your Ideas by Jonathan Morrow (This is a powerful essay that begins with a love of a mother for her son, and then the essay stands on that love and shows us how to fight for our creative works.)
This week, from Longreads, I came across Girl Genius, an essay where a mother tells us about her relationship with her daughter over their shared love of indie rock.