Week 1 Storytelling: Love Your Mother, Hinny

Photo of a mother kissing her baby.

"Mother Kissing Her Baby" by Larisa Okhtienko, April 2014. Source: Flickr.

LOVE your own, kiss your own,

Love your own mother, hinny,

For if she was dead and gone,

You'd ne'er get such another, hinny.

~~

“Learn to pick up after yourself! Once you’re in college, no one will baby you as much as I do!”

There she goes again… I can’t wait until I’m out of here… Just four more months, thought Mark. With a slight groan, Mark quietly told his friend Joshua about how annoying his mother was and that he had to go before she comes at him with a wet towel. Instead of being his usual cheery self, Joshua suddenly got very quiet. As Mark hung up the phone, he was slightly confused. Why was Joshua so sensitive when it came to mothers? They were constant nuisances and anyone can attest to that. All they do is nag, nag, nag all day and talk about how “you’ll never be good enough.” Forget about it. He probably just lost another game of League.

The next day, he met with Joshua for lunch and it seemed Joshua was still bothered by this comments about his mother. In an effort to resolve the tense atmosphere, Mark decided to ask him what the issue was. After a moment of silence, Joshua finally spoke up.

“My mom died yesterday,” he said. Mark took a deep breath. He didn’t know what to say in this situation. He was one of the lucky few that did not have to experience death yet.

“I didn’t want to tell anyone outside of my family because it’s still extremely difficult for me to talk about,” continued Joshua. “When I woke up this morning, I got up and waited for her to burst into my room… To tell me breakfast was ready and to get my lazy bum off the bed and wash up. But… she wasn’t there. All I heard was the sound of my own beating heart as I cried to myself and realized that I was never going to see her again. I’m no longer going to get to chance to tell her how my day went or what I plan on doing with the rest of my life after high school… or tell her that I finally got accepted into Stanford today.”

Tears were streaming down Joshua’s face at this point and Mark was left speechless. Joshua was always calm and collected no matter what the situation, and to see his friend in such a state, Mark was frozen with uncertainty in how to respond.

“I don’t mean to antagonize you for complaining about your mom, but you’re one of my best friends and I want to make you realize that your mother is human too and she loves you more than anyone ever will. Those times when you roll your eyes at her or make negative comments about her, you’re just hurting her feelings. She will always want the best for you, even though she will sometimes express it in odd ways. Blood is thicker than water, so try to listen to her and cherish the time you have together because once she’s gone, you’ll never get another,” said Joshua as he wiped his eyes with a tear-stained napkin.

Joshua’s words had an enormous impact on Mark. As soon as he arrived at his home, he went looking for his mother only to realize that she wasn’t home. This is weird, he thought. She said she would be home all day before I left.

Mark checked his phone and finally noticed that he received five missed calls and two text messages from his father. With a heavy sense of dread, he opened to the text messages to find that his mother was at the hospital after a car accident. In a state of panic, Mark rushed to the hospital to find her and prayed that she was going to be all right. Once he arrived and gave the receptionist his mother’s name, the nurse escorted him to her room. At this point, tears began to well up in his eyes as his heart began beating faster the close they got to the room. Please, please let her be okay, he thought.

The nurse opened the door and he saw his mother on the bed and he let out a yelp. There she was, looking perfectly fine, with a huge smile on her fact. The only injury she sustained was a broken leg. With a huge sigh of relief, Mark walked to her side and gave her a big hug and a kiss on the cheek.

“Wow,” said his mom. “I haven’t gotten a kiss or a hug from you ever since you left elementary school. Maybe I should break a leg more often,” she joked. Mark smiled through his tears and vowed to himself to always treasure his mother and… to give her kisses.

~~

Author's Note: The story was based upon the nursery rhyme "Love your own, kiss your own" quoted after the picture in this post. For this story, I did a complete makeover. I added characters such as Joshua and Mark. I also added in a dramatic element that created tension between Joshua and Mark, which ended in a lesson learned from Mark. The lesson was that he should treat his mother better and love her more, just like the nursery rhyme indicates. The image I chose for this story was a picture of a mother kissing her baby instead of a child kissing his or her mother. This is to show that mothers have so much love for their children, but some children don’t see that. I found that I could relate to this nursery rhyme on a very personal level because I love my mom and it's a shame some people don't. I’ve seen instances where children are ungrateful and treat their mothers like nothing at all, even though mothers have to go through nine months of, quite possibly, hard labor just to bring them to this world. I wanted this story to be dramatic because I felt it would have more of an impact on my audience.

Book: The Nursery Rhyme Book

Author: Unknown, edited by Andrew Lang

Year Published: 1897

Book Source: Project Gutenberg