Her warmth, her care, her fervor, her love, her feel,
her nurture, I fell in love with her in her womb only. My mother is my one and
only world. I don’t know what is outside this shell, but whatever it is, I know
my mother will be there to take care of me. She still sings to me, I can hear
her melodious voice. I am covered by some liquid and I love the warmth of her
armor. I will always love my mother, no matter what happens!
I have been born in this dark place. I know who she
is. I feel protected whenever she takes me in her arms and makes me sleep by her
sweet lullaby. As I am growing, my desire to see her glowing face burns up more
intensely. I don’t know why I can’t see the face of my own mother. I can’t see
anything but darkness. I hear my mother talking to me, consoling me about never
leaving me alone. I don’t want her to leave me alone. I always want to hold her
index finger for support. Always want her to show me my path.
After 7 years, I understand the meaning of blindness.
I more than understand the meaning of being blind, because I feel it. I have
been schooling from a school made for special children. I know how to feel the
raised holes in the paper, known as Braille. I have learned the alphabets of
English language using Braille only. My mother says I am lucky to be not able
to look at the cruel things that human beings do to every living creature
surviving with it. She even says to me that the wars are not a beautiful thing
to victimize. But I have heard about beauty of mother Earth, the orange shade
of sunset, the greenery of trees, the embrace of animals, the innocence of
babies, and the eyes of my mother. I want to see it all. I want to look in the
eyes of my mother and tell her that she is the best thing happened to me.
I used to ask my mother, “Ma, why did God did this to
me? Why did he snatched away my eyesight?”
Every time she heard this question, she pulled me
closer to her and I heard her short laugh always followed by the same answer,
“Son, you know what design means?”
“No, Ma. What is it?”
“Design is the reason why I am your mother. God has
designed everything in this world perfectly.”
“But I am not perfect, Ma”
“Oh Son! You are the most perfect thing to me. You want
to know why God didn’t give you the power to see?”
“Yes Ma”
“He wants someone to always adore the beauty he
designed with his own hands. Unlike the people who can see, who forgets to
admire his beauty, he chose some people to understand his meaning of design, to
feel the nature and not just look at it. He chose you son. And that’s why you
are so perfect”
I always cried after listening to the loveliest
answer, embraced my mother and thanked her for becoming my God.
My eyesight is numb, but my hearing sense became more
intense by time. Sometimes I can hear things that my mother can’t.
“Ma, why didn’t you listen that? It was so clear to
me”, I ask her when she can’t listen to the footsteps of our maid.
“Son, let me tell you another example of design.”
She pulls me in the air to make me sit on her lap and
become the prince of her stories. She continues, “Son, the people who can see
all, hear all and speak all lack something. Can you guess what they lack?”
I am fidgeting with her hair and analyzing her previous
stories but can’t come to any conclusion, so I give up, “No Ma. Please tell
me!”
I feel her cheeks spreading
in a smile and her lips moving, “Son, they lack observation”. I feel her
observing my perplex expression and then she replies, “Son, they can see all,
but they can’t observe things the way you can. They have the eyes to see, but
they don’t have the presence as you do. They can’t observe their surrounding as
you can Son.”
My mother already applied for an eye donor, but since
we are not recklessly wealthy, we can’t get any eye donor. Sometimes I
eavesdropped my mother praying, “I wish every dying person could donate his eye
for the unfortunate ones”.
I knew she was calling me the unfortunate one, but I
also knew that she loves me more than anything in this world; and that is a
design for me. A design of being loved, no matter how unfortunate you are.
7 more years passed, and I made my weakness, my
strength. I worked on concentrating on my hearing sense every passing second of
my life. I designed my strength instead of relying on my luck. I designed my
own path.
I am feeling a fiction novel when I hear my mother
cry. I know she is crying with mirth, so I, instead, continued my novel. “Son,
I have a great news for you”
“Yes Ma, I am listening”, I am still rapt in my novel.
“We got an eye donor!”
I close my novel, search for my mother’s hand and
embrace her with tears of joy rolling down my cheeks. I can at last observe
with my eyes, I can at last see the design of God, and I can at last look at my
mother’s eyes and tell her how much I love her. We hug each other what feels
like eternity when I feel my mother crying, with sorrow.
“What is it Ma? Why are you crying?”
“Oh, these are the tears of joy son”, I know she is
lying, I can sense it from her facial expressions but I don’t know why, and I
prefer not to make her sadder by prodding her for the answer.
We go to the hospital for my operation. It takes me
hours of unconscious patience in the operation theatre. I tell the doctor that
I want to see the beautiful face of my mother as my first flamboyant design of
the world. So I am going to do.
The bandage is being removed by the nurse while my
mother is sitting in front of me, holding my hands as her support. I thought, now I will support her for all her life.
In a matter of time, I can see her glowing face, on which black hair are
falling and she is smiling looking at my hands. She is as beautiful as I
imagined an angel from the sky.
“Ma I can see you. I can see everything in bright
world. Look at me Ma”, I am smiling and crying and laughing and exhilarating,
all at the same time, but above all, I want to embrace my mother. When I see
her looking above my hands and not at my eyes, my heart stopped.
“Ma?”
Her face is still glowing with a smile, but her eyes
showed everything and nothing. She is
the donor.
I start crying, no more happiness by this iridescent
environment. No more anxiety from the look of the nature around me. Just
melancholy for my mother.
“You are the best mother anyone could ever get”, I
glues to my mother and start crying. She embraces me back, but not a hint of
sadness on her face. She is smiling instead. She let me see the beauty of this
world, by sacrificing her power of eyesight. I am crying incessantly in her
arms and she let my tears roll making me feel my eyesight blur in a matter of
seconds.
“Don’t cry Son. I needed you to see the beauty of the nature around you and unlike others,
always respect the design of the God. Look outside the window”
I rub my eyes, wipe my tears, walk to my right and
look at the elusive divine miracle of God’s design. My mother comes behind me,
keeps her waving arm on my right shoulder and asks, “Describe it Son”
“Ma, it is… it is sacred. It is heaven. It is more than
what I felt and how you described it. It is more than what I have read about
it. It is something that I couldn’t have ever observed if it were not given by you”,
I embrace her, “I will always be there to hold your index finger Ma. I will
always love you and be there for you, no matter what happens. I will admire the
beauty of the design of God every single second, as you said Ma... Ma?”
“Yes Son”
“You are the best design of my life!”
L.C.
