With every passing year, I have increased respect for the celebration of Mother’s Day.
The reason is that most people my age don’t have a reason to enjoy a happy Mother’s Day moment for the simple reason that their own mothers have already departed this earth.
As a result, their respect has to be paid to other mothers in their lives such as wives, mothers-in-law, daughters, aunts, other female relatives with children and, of course, female friends and associates who are mothers.
In my case, the women of my immediate family to whom I pay respect today as mothers include my wife and her own mother, four of my five daughters and a daughter-in-law who together have blessed me with nine grands to date, my sister and one of her daughters, and not overlooking those of my extended family in places such as Boston, New York, California and Trinidad, and the list goes on.
However, what makes Mother’s Day more meaningful and extra special for me the older I get is the fact that in addition to the hundreds of relatives, friends and associates who I salute as mothers, I have above all else, a living mother whose life I am extremely proud and happy to celebrate on this day.
Lena Millicent Gilkes, my mother, enjoys the clean fresh air of St Lucy at her home in Checker Hall and is currently the oldest living member of the family.
If she survives just two more years, and nobody doubts that she will, she will be pelting back a glass of her favourite Merlot with the Governor General to toast her 100th birthday.
But perhaps the unique quality that, more than anything else, makes her a rarity is the fact that hers is a 40-year-old mind, memory, intelligence and everything else associated with an active brain, inside a 98-year-old body.
She is as aware of the latest releases from the White House about the killing of Osama bin Laden and the state of the US economy as she is with the latest releases from Rihanna, Vybz Kartel or Lady Gaga, or the latest releases from custody in the District ‘A’ courts.
She remembers things that I have already forgotten that I used to know and constantly astounds people meeting her for the first time, especially doctors, with her vast storehouse of knowledge about every and anything under the sun, but in particular about things of a medical nature.
Being the very, very private person that she has been all of her long life, I know she will give me a scolding for writing about her. But today is Mother’s Day and I could think of no better way of letting her and the rest of the world know how happy I am to still have a mother alive and in living colour.
At the same time, I am not allowing the focus on my own to blind me to the fact that thousands of you who are reading this here at home in Bim or online across the Bajan diaspora, are also mothers. And to all of you I wish the happiest and most enjoyable Mother’s Day.
