The Capacity to Love

If I had a dollar for each time one of my late Mother's students said "I was her favorite", I would be a rich person.  I knew she had her favorites because some names came up in conversations at home more frequently than others.  Growing up, we had some of her students hanging around the house after school hours.   She would always say that the ones who stood out among her hundreds of students were the smart ones and the badlongon (naughty) ones. I used to wonder why they often said that she was "the best teacher they ever had", but looking back, I realized that what she really did was to "mother" them.  She had a huge heart and was not afraid to show love.  She had the ability to make you feel that you were, in fact, her favorite one.

I do not know if this was the case for all of my sisters, but for a while, I certainly felt that way.  She told me I was her fighter, her right-hand person who accompanied her through thick and thin.  Her words, not mine.  Then came the day I left to join an airline based in another country.  She wrote frequently and made me feel love across the miles.  However, my absence left a void and I knew that she had come to depend on my younger sister more and more as time passed by.  I did not mind because she never made me feel that she loved me any less.  The ties that bound us were impossible to break even though we pulled on them roughly from time to time. 

She would, of course, protest vehemently that she did not have a favorite child, that she loved her five children equally.  I have an only son whom I love with all of my heart and am unsure if I have the capacity to love another one the way I love him.  I don't know how she did it, but she had enough love to go around, so I did not begrudge the fact that someone else became the favored one.  They say that we love people based on how they make us feel and I felt that it was also true in her case.  

My older sister recently received a packet from a former student. Aside from a compilation of her writing, it included a letter that touchingly said that he is who he is today because my mother saw the potential in him.  She had that ability to look at a person with love and make them believe in themselves.  I will always be grateful for that.