The phrase “you’re not everyone”, just like in me, must perpetuate your childhood when we visit some memory or are among friends talking about childhood adventures. At home, my four brothers and I grew up under the affectionate eye of my mother, but with a lot of discipline and the strong pulse of a woman, whose main characteristic is resistance and strength.
When we were little, we heard with some constant from my mother that we weren’t everyone. And this stays with me to this day, but from a different perspective. Faced with the impositions and ready-made formulas that society tries to force us to believe, I turn to my mother’s words, that I’m not everyone and it’s okay.
Is there a right age to graduate? Right age to get married, separate, fulfill a big dream, start over? Does everyone have the same time? Do we also take the same time to digest and act on our processes? As individuals, everyone has their own experiences and they dictate our actions and the way we deal with our (mis)events.
They say that we begin to understand our parents after having children, but I believe that this understanding also comes with maturity. When I revisit my childhood scenes, I have another perception of that time. I thought my mother was stressed, too protective to the point of not letting us, as she says, live in other people’s houses or go to places that, guess what, everyone else went to. Today, I see that my mother was doing her best, sharing the task of being a mother, with endless shifts in a hospital, a profession she dedicated herself to for more than three decades.
Even in the rush of everyday life, I can remember my mother arriving in surgical center clothes, checking tasks, going to our beds to kiss and ask how the day was. My mother did everything she could to ensure that we didn’t have any gaps in her presence in our lives. I understand that, even so, she must have felt guilty for not being able to donate more.
And, therefore, I use the phrase that is the subject of so many humorous posts which say that we learn to deal with frustration when our mothers repeatedly say that we are not everyone, to say that my mother is not everyone.
Nursing technician, she managed, alongside my father, to raise her children with presence, do you understand the dimension of this? Presence is gold. Even with the rigidity of our upbringing, my mother played on the floor with her children, played hide and seek and did it so well that we asked my father for help and set up a task force to search. How nostalgic!
And my mother’s story already shows that she is not everyone. She gave birth to children not only in her belly, but in her heart. She always overflowed with love, giving, and if I could choose just one word to define her, it would be humanity.
Not everyone, despite suffering, encourages their children to leave home as teenagers to focus on studying. Imagine, what a fuss it was, in a small town, when someone, practically still a child, went abroad to study. She has been questioned many, many times. She said she believed in the education she gave her children and in the relationship she built over time. Sometimes I try to measure my mother’s fear, in addition to the courage and strength she had to be far away.
Even far away, she was present. She came frequently to the capital and made a point of following up on how we were doing at school and in life. I think that, deep down, my mother was also betting her chips and hoping it would work out… And she did.
Being a mother, I hear, it’s tiring, there are no holidays for children, there is no such thing. And on my mother’s most difficult days, I remember we were in the back seat of the car listening to her sing her favorite songs, from Milton Nascimento, Rita Lee to Emílio Santiago, or Roberto Carlos’ discography. For us, at that age, it was just like any other trip. For my mother, today I understand that it was her escape valve: driving aimlessly while she sang. I think it was an attempt to reconnect with herself.
Imposing herself every day as the owner of her life, my mother taught me by example. Imposing, she showed me that no one could dictate what I could be. The man will never understand, but the woman’s struggle to prove her competence is daily, constant and more tiring, I guarantee it.
It was in this cradle, surrounded by feminine strength, that I grew up. I loved seeing my mother in her jeans, a loose men’s blouse, being her own person. And, over the years, according to our stages, the perceptions we have about our parents change.
As children, they are our heroes, strongholds, perfect and know exactly what they are doing. When we grow up, we begin to see them with their imperfections and their flaws, but the love remains. When they are older, the feeling of caring for them invades us. The desire is to repay everything they did for us, but I think that is humanly impossible.
Since I left home, on most commemorative dates I’m physically away, but always close in my heart. I make a point of telling my mother how proud I am of her, how I love her and how fantastic she was as a mother.
You know what? From daughter to mother, thank you for not being everyone. More than that, thank you for not letting me be everyone.
Tacita Muniz is a communicator, reporter at the Acre News Agency; She worked for 11 years in the editorial office of Portal G1 in Acre, heading projects involving all states. She was also responsible for feeding a page with special reports about the Amazon. She is a fan of rock, films, books and boxing, as well as an apprentice writer in her spare time.
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