Learning to love mom

I think every child learns to truly love their mother the moment they watch how children are delivered in health class. I mean, before that, love for mom was sort of a consolation for the sagging breasts from sucking out all that milk, the crows feet after pissing on her pseudo-Corbusier chair (a touch of luxe in every modern Third World home), and stealing daddy time away from her (or perhaps depending on what kind of animal she married, she might be silently thanking us).

However, when we watch that horrid clip, should be rated XXXX, we realize that our mothers have loved us even before we began to prove anything. After all, we come out hardly looking like Anne Geddes babies.

Sorry for the graphic description, but we do come out looking like a big human balut. Newborn babies look scary, and if I were to pop one out I’d need to super doze on Demerol. Yet every video I see where my friends’ and their dutiful husbands film a birth, the baby comes out ever so violently from the most sensitive part of a woman, (for men, it’s their ego) and the mother, exhausted from screaming profanities and pushing a seven-lb. bundle of pain out, is ever so excited to cradle the balut in her arms. There are in some cases a thorough once-over of the indiscernible features of the newborn to make sure they got the daddy right. (I have always wondered what the story behind the look of relief on every mother’s face was when they gave birth).

So we are loved even after we caused our mother the pain of her life, a pain that makes liposuction feel like a facial. And as if we haven’t caused enough grief, our mothers realize that this is just the beginning. Like that spectacular opening scene in Casino made by the legendary Saul Bass in collaboration with Martin Scorsese, it just hints of what’s to come.

It’s as a baby when we learn that lifelong habit of taking things for granted. We cry, she comes and plugs us with milk. We wet ourselves, she cleans and even puffs our buns with baby powder. She feeds us rather than have that pedicure she still hasn’t had since the pregnancy test kit went from white to blue, and we just spit it out. She’s thankful when we’re considerate enough to sleep (something as adults we risk hard-earned jobs to get more of).

As babies the world becomes our oyster. We have this giant (in a baby’s eye at least) catering to our every whim. Plus, we get treats for working on bodily functions such as batting eyes, smiling or sometimes, if you’re really cute, simply staring. Then we learn to talk and everything changes.

The world did get in trouble with the Tower of Babel, where everyone insisted on getting their own way. In the modern day Tower of Babble, we’re still wading in deep muck trying to get the upper hand. We have not contributed much at this point. Just a lot of pee stains, tantrums and useless toys. Yet we brat out to our tired mothers and become militant toddlers when we are being corralled for our beastly ways. We’re freeloading pieces of inferno with a bladder problem and anorectic appetite. Let’s just pray to heaven that we are cute to make this task worthwhile. And yet at the end of the day, despite our Leona Helmsley inclinations, we are still given a bedtime story and a kiss goodnight.

When we get to that age that we begin to want to be adults, you know, not wanting to see any Disney movie because it’s too kiddie (even if we secretly want to) and insisting that we are mature enough to watch Rated R films (and quietly freak out on the sex scenes), the tug of war begins. Mother becomes like Stalin and manipulates us into doing what she likes. Being children of post-Flower Power, post-Charlie’s Angels, post-Seinfeld we are hardheaded Ritalin needing missiles of misadventure. No becomes a favorite word, clever kids are either sullenly silent or sweetly affectionate with the fakeness of Sweet-‘N-Lo. We learn how to work on our mothers (for would-be politicians) or work against them (for would-be guerillas). Yet, despite our obvious tactics, she still feeds us and kisses us tenderly to sleep.

When we do finally become adults, you’d think mom would be glad to have her palace all to herself without the clanging of pots and pans and the screams of an ungrateful spawn. Yet, she still sends you food, calls you everyday and bails you out when your credit card gets declined. This doesn’t end there when you do decide to become a mommy, she offers her abode as a kennel for your brat. She gives advice on how to rear it, using you and your tricks as prime examples.

I hate it that we only have one day every year to honor our mothers. After years of chicanery, we finally come to our senses and realize that this woman who imposed curfews on us and cramped our style has become the standard of what human beings should be.

This realization trickles in slowly right in between you idolizing Courtney Love and Mother Teresa.

We may have despised her ways then, and yet when I do have my own brat, I would never raise her differently from what I learned with such resistance. Right from the moment it comes out of me looking like a balut, I shall cradle it in my arms like a treasure, just like my mom did to me. After all, mother knows best.