The Water Lilly

10 October 2007

by HRM Deborah

My mother was living in a place for a time, which she felt was very isolated and my sister even in those years never gave much time to my mother. My sister to me, tended to be a rather selfish person and I am thinking she probably still is, in many ways until this day. I have not seen her, in about nine years.

Getting back to where I was, my mother became so lonely that she began to pray for another child, she always told me she asked Allah for a child with certain qualities. While, I do not know exactly, what she asked Allah for in qualities, the baby that came was I.

I do remember her saying she got more in a child then she thought to ask Allah for and I do know she loved me very much. She along with my one grandfather, use to say Allah sent me.

When I was two years old before we had to move again and my mother became ill with Rheumatic Fever, that she was having many hardship’s at that time.

She was so over burdened with work that I offered to help her one day to bring in wood for the fireplace. I had to stand at the sliding glass door and watch her chop the wood, because she was afraid if I were outside I may have gotten hurt.

I was so little that I couldn’t pick up the pieces of stove wood, because they was to heavy, so she laid a piece at a time in my arms and I would run in and put it in it’s place by the fireplace in the house, then run back out for another piece until she said we was finished. She always thanked me for my help.

Another time, I wished to learn to iron because in those days women sprinkled their laundry before ironing, because they did not have steam irons. So large loads of dampened wash, was rolled in baskets to be ironed. I will admit, I have never seen anyone even to this day that could Iron and starch clothing as nice as my mother did. When it came to starching some of our dress clothes, they would be so stiff they could actually stand by themselves

Anyway, this one particular day, I decided I was going to iron, I had seen her do this so many times that I thought I could do it too. One problem, my mother use to test the iron with one wet finger and to me her finger looked about the size of my small hand.

Therefore, I in my best thinking for a two year old decided to wet my whole hand to test the iron. Well, it was stuck to the bottom of the iron and I began to scream at the top of my lungs. My mother came running, got me loose and asked me what I was doing, so I told her, I wanted to help her iron.

She put on my hand a type of baking soda, water mixture and wrapped my hand up, over time it healed and I have no scares thanks’ to her.

I did learn to iron without burning myself and the ironing board started growing along with me.

What is most amazing even to me is after the death of my grandmother when I was fifteen years old, this very woman became the Queen of Palestine; a country she loved more then her own life.