A mother doesn’t need to remind her how much her child loves her, nor does she need a bouquet of flowers as a testament of how deeply profound an impact she’s made to her children and how she glues the family together.

Clearly, I received any hugs and kisses. Wet ones especially. I got a huge pink heart lollipop made by Ariz at school and flowers promises from Adani. Ayisha is making a card she refuses to let me see until she shows it to her teacher and Aliya seems to be nonchalant about the whole thing.

But it’s never the end of the world for me either. A boss had her teenage daughter posted a video of her playing guitar dedicating a song to her and I read with envy the flowers and the breakfasts other mothers get. But silently, I read too about the mothers who are no longer around and that I am.

Well, the day was spent at my auntie’s as we have the usual clan’s get together doa selamat and makan-makan. I made a huge Saint Honour trifle which was the star attraction, ehem ehem and some cake pops. Us cousins bought another cake for our aunties i.e. mothers above the age of 40 to cut the cake and to celebrate with them. It was a fine day, food-ish sort of day and a great Sunday.

My own Mak is one role model I have no chance of emulating, regardless how much I try. I used to resent her strict upbringing on us and now I wished I had started earlier with mine.

She was a teacher and juggled teaching and kids and she hardly yelled at us all. She instilled in us the love of books from very early on and I was a voracious reader too, thanks to the Perpustakaan Kanak-Kanak at Jalan Tun Razak where we get to spend the Saturdays when she was at the school tending to co-curriculum activities.

My defining moment came the day I left for the UK when I was barely 17. She cried and it was so hard to let me go and I never did cry. It was true that those get left behind suffer more than those going and through the 5 years I was there, she sent me letters upon letters, it’s as if I never left as I knew exactly how everything was, some 13,000 km away. One news she never did tell me in the letters was when my grandfather, Wan passed away and it hit us bad.

I still have in my office drawers, a few of her letters. My twin, GartRed was studying at Liverpool for my final 3 years at the UK and I was at Manchester. Mak solved the problem of being fair to both twins in writing letters by making sure she wrote an even number of pages per letter. And she made sure that I get original copies of say pages 1 and 3, GartRed gets pages 2 and 4. Being fair was important to her.

Well, Happy Mother’s Day Mak! I know I don’t say it quite often enough but I love you to no end and thank you so so the very much for every single good thing that I do, which you have taught me to do.