For the past five years, my mother has kept me in window clings. Every college dorm or old apartment window donned pumpkins at Halloween, Santa and snowmen at Christmas, and turkeys in between. Currently, chickens and bunnies on my kitchen window proclaim spring. It seems small, but my mom's window clings and the boxes they come in—full of local newspaper clips and American snacks—make me the grudging object of envy among fellow vagabonds. "Your mom is so cute," they always say. I know what they mean. My mom is the best.
She worries about me, but in a practical, hands-off way, shaking her head and saying prayers (and sending provisions) while I traipse around the world. She did contact a family friend who occasionally does business in China to ask him to check up on me when he's "in the neighborhood" of a country with 400 million people. Against all odds, she's convinced my father—whose words around this time last year were, "CHINA? Why on earth would anyone want to go to China?"—to spend ten days here with me before I go home next month.
I think my mom would be impressed with the women I've encountered this year: A Tibetan nun in India, who called me "teacher" but treated me like a daughter, pumping me full of rice, vegetables and cookies, insisting that I borrow her gloves for my eternally frigid hands, and grinding up my food poisoning medicine with concerned, motherly diligence; My student's mother, who keeps her cell-phone dictionary on hand solely to translate the names of the food she's sending me home with, who forecasts the weather for me and admonishes me to wear more clothes when it's chilly, who gave me a bottle of cough medicine and the classic Chinese prescription to "have a good rest" when I was sick.
In addition to my mother's care stretching across the Pacific, and all the willing proxies I've encountered abroad, so many women have filled a maternal role this year. My aunts sent me prayer-filled Christmas cards (and one pesky glitter-filled card, whose remnants are still being swept up) and the right words at just the right time. My sisters provided books, pictures and even a Christmas tree. My bosses are wide-eyed at the amount of mail I receive from someone as "distant" as my brother-in-law's grandmother.
No matter how independent we are, we always appreciate being taken care of. Window clings from America and flimsy black gloves from India remind me that good mothers are everywhere, and it's a good thing.
Happy Mother's Day!
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