Madre De Todas Madres: El Sexo Femenino y Sus Virtudes

My mother has always had a saying: el que lucha encuentra.  For a long time I thought it was exclusive to her, that she was the only one in my life who felt that way, that somehow, for some reason, she had had this ingrained in her mind and heart, and that while others surely possessed this same mentality, nobody held on to it as a belief as deeply as she did.  How could I not?  She was the matriarch in our familia. Nothing ever happened that she didn’t know about.  None of us could make a move without her finding out one way or another, sooner or later.  Never was there a problem that she didn’t have a solution to.  Everything was possible to her with a little faith and a lot of ganas… to luchar.

Save for a couple of times, and these were later in my teenage years, I never witnessed her in an utter state of disillusion or despair.  She had plenty of reason to give up.  We were poor. We were alone.  We were living in a place no one else would ever want to live.  A shack basically, with no heating or air conditioning, an outhouse for a restroom, no hot water, no beds for us to sleep in, a cooler for a refrigerator, and holes in our aluminum roof that made it impossible to keep the floors dry when it was raining.  Why she didn’t give up, I still don’t fully understand, but I am thankful everyday that she didn’t and that she pulled us through… a veces a puros pleitos, but she did.

Now I know I’m not the only one with such the gran fortuna to have had such a mujer, hecha y derecha as my mother, and if you’ve got stories to tell, I’d love to hear them.  Still, more than just that, today, I’m beginning to realize this particular trait is one the female sex possesses and develops more often than not, and most definitely much better than us guys.  Time and time again it has presented itself to me in very humbling ways that have often left me at once speechless and sometimes even at the brink of tears.  Ya sé, que desgracia… ¡soy un chillón! Pero ¿qué le voy hacer?

I have felt it in my sisters’ hugs, their ability to tell me things without really saying them to me in words, my eldest sister’s way of being mother to me while never ceasing to be the sister who understands things my mother never would, my wife’s ability to make me feel better when I feel the world is crashing down on me, the love they all demonstrate to each other, so openly and without any inhibitions, the way us members of the sexo fuerte never could, the manner in which they all love their kids, above and beyond everything else, and at the cost of doing whatever it takes to take care of them and prepare them for a better tomorrow.

I thank God everyday she didn’t give up.

I hope the rest of the women in my life do the same.