Radiant Tulips
Amaryllis are bright and bold flowers, blooming during winter, a place where even the strongest lives fade away. As a child that's what my mother was to me, a radiant flower surviving strongly and boldly in the harshest conditions, never faltering once. Sometimes I wish my mother had stayed that way in my eyes; if she had stayed that way, then it meant I'd never have to see her weak, to see her fall.
When I was about six to seven, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. During that time my head couldn't possibly wrap around what was going on, how long did she have cancer, how much it hurt, did it even? The events form incoherently in my head, I can't exactly remember when it started and I can't quite place when it ended, all I remember are those few moments in time when I first started to understand that she was no Amaryllis.
The time couldn't matter less, dark or day all I saw was the cold dark pitying eyes of my Mother. She sat my oldest sister, myself, and my brother down as she told us the news. My other two sisters wouldn't understand so it made sense why they weren't anywhere in the room. My older sister looked sad, she was only a year older than me, yet somehow possessed infinite knowledge compared. I couldn't understand that look, and much less my brothers. For my brother on the other hand he looked like his world had shattered. I remember his expression clearly, his face was full of dread and he didn't speak. My hand hesitated to touch, wanting to comfort him, but I was afraid of showing my own vulnerabilities. He stood up before I could ever start to ponder otherwise and looked my mother in the eyes.
They exchanged a few words, something that a young me couldn't understand, before the conversation fell and my brother looked even more upset. I couldn't help the words that stumbled out next, “Are you okay?” He looked stricken at my words like I had hit a particular sensitive wound. His face crumbled as he looked away from nodding slowly, his facial expression unknown as he spoke. “I'm fine, I'll be in my room. Goodnight Mom.”
I turned to my mother afterward, my eyes widened when I saw her. In my child-like eyes, my mother looked deathly. For the first time my mother appeared weak, yet her attitude shared none of the sentiment. She acted fine, she said she was fine and if I didn't see those sunken brows and dark bags under her eyes I would've believed her. I didn't understand, but my heart felt heavy. It felt as if I was gonna lose her. I wanted to tell her so many things at the time, but I couldn't. I didn't want to be vulnerable, I didn't want to be weak.
After that, my mother stayed in bed for most of the time, sometimes she would go to the doctor to get a check up or the doctor would go to her if she was having a bad day. I grew distant with my brother during that time, he often stayed inside his room or hung out with friends out of the house. It was probably his way of coping. He was the oldest out of all of us and didn't have the blissful curse of ignorance, I can't imagine what it would've been like for him.
To be honest I don't think I want to know either. I often wonder what I would do now if I wasn’t that small ignorant child, but I don't think I could have coped as he did. I don't think I can ignore the fact that my mother might be taken from me, I don't know where I would be if she was. Maybe it's a good thing I was a child, blessed with the curse of innocence, so I didn't have to know, so I didn't have to cope, so I didn't have to understand. Without ignorance how could I stand to smile in my mother's presence?
Those few muddled moments flip like the channels on a television, they blend together with indescribable color, sometimes though it stops for a short moment it pauses to let me watch for a few more seconds before fading off into a blurred mess.
The house was quiet. I had stayed home after throwing up and I was left alone while my siblings went to school and my step-father at work. In that house it was just me, my newborn sister sleeping peacefully and my mother huddled in the other room. I was bored, so indescribably bored that I went to entertain myself with my mother's company, ignorant of the ways she was slowly dying.
The TV buzzed statically, the pictures mixed around hypnotizing as black and white glitched around the screen. Sound played out like a hum, only there to fill in the silence as my mother scrolled endlessly through her phone. Though noticing my gaze she smiled, a small turn of her lips but it was fulfilling, and my little feet stomped my way towards her, the carpet making a soft pam sound with each step as my eyes bulged up at my mother with wonder, love and misplaced curiosity.
I noticed the new inclusion of our TV. The frame was a deep ebony and was wide and larger, bigger than any TV I've seen, and much less affordable. So I asked my mother, “When did we get a new TV?”
My mom was always honest and she never painted things under a child light, she gave it to me straight. “The cancer foundation gave it to us.”
As a child I was taught that I should always be thankful for my caregivers so I said “Hurray for cancer!”
My mother snorted, amused by my response as she scolded me gently, “No, baby, cancer is bad.”
I frowned, “But it gave us the TV?”
“The people who helped me against it gave it to us, cancer is the thing that hurts me,” she said, putting it simple for my child's mind yet not cutting anything off.
I nodded and then rewrote my previous statement, “Bad cancer then.” She laughed again and patted my head gently as the TV played a nonsensical show or movie in the background.
My mother's strength to stay positive shined through even in her darkest time, never shying away from being that pillar I needed. Even during times when she probably needed more help from me.
There was this one time when my mother was getting a check-up and we came with her, we were going to eat afterward. Children are often excitable and can't read the room, and for some reason, I was in such a happy mood. I was playful and excited that I had the brilliant idea to slide down the seatbelt like a firepole. Flopping widely from side to side, the seatbelt unable to support my weight, I hit my head on the truck's hard metal, blood pouring down from the tip of my head, catching on my pretty pink skirt and staining my flippant sandals.
My mother rushed to my side, her hand cradling my head and holding me close as we made our way inside the hospital bathroom. She wiped my head gently, careful to not agitate the wound as she whispered sweet nothings to calm me down, guiding me through even steps of the pain, before long the wound was gone and time had passed in a blink of an eye. My head turned white as the only thought that lingered inside was the fact that my mother was late to her appointment, though I never understood why it stuck with me.
Now I know why. The idea that someone would inconvenience themselves for me was rare and something I didn't think I was worthy of, perhaps that's the reason why when my mother hugged me I held on a little tighter that day.
The survival rate for all cancers combined that were diagnosed from 2009 through 2015 was 67% overall. Cruel as it may sound I'm happy that my mother was one of those few who made it in those percentages. I'm happy that she wasn't the 43% percent. I was so happy that I no longer had to see my mother in a state of such weakness. Yet be that as it may even during that entire period I think what came only a few weeks would be the weakest I would see my mother for a long time.
It must've been a few days or weeks after my mother was successfully cured of cancer or at the very least safe from its poisonous clutches before she got news from her doctor. it wasn't too out of the ordinary.
My brother was in his room doing god knows what, and my sister was distracted by her phone. I heard the doctor come in and as a noisy child, I peeked through the open door to see my mother's body tremble. She was crying. A sight I had never seen before. Even through her cancer, I had never seen her once fall or cry, but I guess the pressure finally folded onto her.
I had only heard snippets, she had yellow fever. I didn't know the specifics so I looked it up and once I saw that it was fatal I started panicking. I was scared for both her and myself. If she was gone, who would take care of me? If she was gone, who could love me like she did? If she cried over something like this, how bad would it be? My mind whirled crazily. I jumped from one conclusion to another.
We moved a few months after that. It appears one of the things that causes yellow fever is bad air and where we used to live. That's all the air was. We moved to a nice suburban area where my mother said we lived there for several years, but we didn't. But it was better than the other area because at least my mother was better here than there. I eventually ended up forgetting about what I heard and putting more focus on school and other stuff, and before I knew it, it was spring.
Tulips are vulnerable flowers, born weak. It's a miracle they even grow, given how little protection they have and the still shaky circumstances that may come with the season. Yet even so they are strong and resilient. It perplexes me how such a flower still grows through such weakness and vulnerability, how even with its many flaws against it. It's considered “incredibly strong.” I admire them. To be able to resist the very nature of the world, to survive in a world that fights against you, and to remain so beautiful during those times as well.
My mother taught me most things, and even now she keeps teaching me things; how easy it is to love someone as simply as breathing, how vulnerabilities are not weaknesses, and perhaps the most important one of all how to be strong. My mother is stronger than anyone I have ever seen or met and even young me thought the same thing. I saw her tall posture, her ambition, her warm gaze, and her loving touch.
I had always thought of her as an Amaryllis, bold, strong, and without weakness. Yet with all of that, she is still vulnerable, she still falls, she wasn't always this strong and she won't always be this strong, yet she’ll keep trying because it's in her nature, because it's who she is. To me, my mother is the most radiant tulip ever, even if others might think her weak and vulnerable, I think of them as strong and beautiful. To me, a tulip is the true definition of strength. The ability to survive and try no matter what.
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