Feb 10 : Happy Birthday Amma

The day started off groggy, didn't really mean to sit in bed for the first 2 hours of the day, but I'm glad I woke up 2 hours early to do that.

There's a sermon I heard from Fr. Nelson a couple years, I must have been 13-14. The sermon was about mothers, in India where I'm from, a good amount of people make there wage as coolies, meaning unskilled labour. They don't make much money and sending kids to school is often very hard, and sometimes it makes more sense to send them to work than school. Infact my grandmother told me, the way they get children to work, is by letting them receive the money from employer. The child gets a sense of responsibility and a feeling that they can do something important for the family. I believe at a young age that can be persuasive, back to the main point. Yet a great number of parents sent their child to school because they want better for their child, they endure the pain so that one day their kids won't have to. This is the main thing the priest said, he compared parents, specifically mothers to be like candles to children. Candles that burn bright, letting their child see the way. If you've ever seen a candle they'll burn bright for a long time, until the very end when they flicker a little and then go out. That's the pain the mothers endure to push their children forward. I believe that's a unique property of mothers. My mom stayed home with us, when she could have worked and had a career, she's well educated. Instead she chose us, she stayed home made sure we were on a good path. I remember we had to extra math problems because she didn't think school was hard enough. I had to read everyday, and then write whatever she read from a book, because my handwriting was horrible. She put the extra work in, she gave us that extra love, that she didn't have to. I really love my mom and I hope that she doesn't feel like she wasted her life on us, I don't think my mom thinks like that, but I'll never know.