A mother's Benediction

So I always make fun of people’s status updates on face book but this status update almost brought tears to my eyes.

It is my son's 8th birthday today.... the memories come flooding back. Of being a first year university student and waking up one day to the news that I was pregnant. And it was news to me because it had never occurred to me that I might fall pregnant and had it not been for my boyfriend (at the time) who helpfully supplied me with that information - I have no idea when I would've realised it. So many memories...bittersweet now but all tinged with some sadness over the naivety, fear and vulnerability that marked that chapter of my life. Memories of telling my friends Mmeli Dube and Mfundo Mlilo that I was pregnant and so scared of being laughed at by the other students. And I remember Mfundo saying, "If they laugh at you, you must laugh with them...take away their power to humiliate you by laughing about it too". I'm certain he does not remember saying that, but I did just that - I laughed because the only other alternative was to cry. And somehow over the years, laughter has become my default weapon in confronting life and its seemingly insurmountable challenges. Happy birthday Simphiwe Dube - my son, my light, my bringer of wisdom, my motivator, my triumph, my joy and my life-long celebration. I love you with a pain that punctures the soul and lodges itself in my marrow; I love you defencelessly....constantly and daily assaulted by the enormous weight of an affection and fierce devotion that renders me incapable of caring about anything or anyone more than I care about you. They say a mother's love is an unbridled force of nature - they don't know the half of it. I love you with the violence of a hurricane, with the ferocity of a cyclone, with the mercilessness of a blazing sun, with the relentlessness of a hailstorm and with the totally of all that is me, all that is mine and all that is within my power to command. And I love you more than all these words have the capacity to express, contain or convey. Happy birthday Simphiwe Dube, Silandulo omuhle, Mthembo ozithembayo, niNswimbo... And finally, a mother's benediction "may all that is good be your portion in the land of the living"