Nanay

I saw my mother's photo this morning sitting beside my father on a brand new sofa. Judging on her seemingly unhappy face, she seems to have reluctantly agreed to be snapped! She doesn't like being photographed at all. 

Nanay, as we lovingly call her, has the most beautiful porcelain skin sans the use of cosmetics or glutathione. Unfortunately, none of us 3 girls inherited that. She can pull off any dress with her height and flawless skin. She always has a very serious face almost mistaken to be frowning. Lines and wrinkles and other signs of aging may have outlined her face but she remains luminous to this day.

She's frugal and very simple in nature. Perhaps it is because both her parents were survivors of World War II and both married at a tender age of 15. It's unphatomable how  teenagers in the late 40's could raise a child in post-war era. And that, too, 8 more children followed. You imagine the rest of the story.

She's an incurable collector of things considered valuable to her. No, she's not a hoarder. Perhaps it is her longing for her grown children translating to not parting from things that remind strongly of us--like old photographs, mother's day gifts from years past, elaborate curtains and draperies that beautified our home, stainless and non-stick pots and pans, tupperware, perpetual calendars--yes, that particular 2004 calendar marking the day I married Indranil.

I don't know where she gets her strength from. With 7 children, individually unique, including me as one of the pasaways (stubborn), I can only assume her days and years were full of challenges, pain and sufferring, and, hopefully, joy as well.

And yet! She doesn't want her image immortalized. She doesn't know how incredible a woman she is for me.