Amma

I strongly take after my father’s genetics. Oftentimes, when I stare at his childhood photographs, I have to remind myself that I am pursuing his photo albums, not mine. As I walk down the narrow stairs of my grandparents’ home, the walls are adorned with his annual school picture in chronological order. The older he becomes in each frame, the more I recognize myself. He truly mirrors me to a tee with his playful smile and his curious eyes. In fact, we resemble one another so much to the point that we both possess a small cut at the tail of our left eyebrow. In the end, to call him my twin is like calling Albert Einstein clever: an absurd understatement. 

There’s a cliché-ridden yet paramount concept that I resonated with after settling into college my freshman year: soulmates. I always used to believe that this notion had to pertain to a romantic partner. But I was quickly proved wrong when I realized that I have had mine my whole life: my mother, my Amma.

There are only elementary words to describe the love I carry for my Amma; our relationship runs so deep that the adjectives dissipate when thinking about the immense impact she has bestowed upon me. While she is quite possibly the most wise individual that has graced my life, it’s not her words or advice that have tethered us so closely together. Though thirty years apart, the sole reason that my Amma and I are so incredibly close is because despite physical appearances, we have somehow embodied the same persona. 

She’s my 90s partner in crime through and through. During my high school years, for nearly three years, every Friday night, the two of us would lay on the same couch and binge Beverly Hills, 90210, and Melrose Place. Our car rides to school consisted of Al B Sure, Madonna, George Michael, 2Pac, Notorious B.I.G, and so many more. Because of her, my mind has grown accustomed to an era of brilliant lyricists, culture, and trends that have affected my own personality and sense of creativity. Moreover, they have intertwined my interests with Amma’s, bringing us closer together and allowing me to understand her adolescence to a purposeful extent.

All of my empathetic tendencies derive directly from her. In the early 2000s, instead of staying in the warmth of our house on humid, rainy, summer days in Michigan, Amma used to patiently wait for the ominous clouds to pass and would prop me up on our kitchen counter to slip rainboots on me. She would then scour our front yard for a tiny tree branch and hand it to me. Hand in hand, Amma and I would make a full round in our old subdivision, searching for tiny insects that had struggled moving on the pavement during the rainstorm. Amma demonstrated how to gingerly lift the small creature with the branch and release it into the grass where it would best thrive. These twenty minute walks with Amma not only instilled in me the importance of treating everything with the utmost respect and care, but also revealed to me her heart of gold.

Amma is a woman who has animated and offered everything pure in this world to me. She has expanded my imagination since my youth, encouraging me to pay attention to the fine details as they would define and strengthen my character the best. She’s the woman who purposefully spent hours upon hours at the bookstore to find children’s works with the most meaningful lessons to relay to me. She’s the woman who stayed awake with me in the late hours of the night to revise my papers. She’s the woman who, without hesitation, drove to Ann Arbor on a work day to pick me up when I was at rock bottom. 

When most children are in their teen years, they tend to resent their parents for miniscule things, which naturally causes a disconnect. I urge all children to stray away from these sentiments as much as possible, as we truly do not know the gravity of how much our mothers do for us on a daily basis. I wake up every morning thanking the stars that I am Amma’s and she is mine. She’s my guidepost; my light when everything else seems dark; my pillar of strength and energy; my everything. And I don’t think she’ll ever know that my greatest aspiration in life is to emulate her beautiful aura to the best of my ability.

• #mother-daughter relationships