"Mama, Thank You"

I grew up in a not so well off family. My father is a fisherman and my mother does not have a stable job. Sometimes she does laundry for our neighbors and relatives, sometimes she does some project-based factory jobs, most of the times, she sells fish to the neighborhood.

If she have something else to do, she lets me and my siblings do the selling of the those fish. At first it was fun, but later on as I grew older, selling fish was no longer fun at all. I was ashamed because i smell bad and I envied other girls who spent theiir day playing dolls.

My mother barely spend for our toys. She just let us make our own toys. I remember drawing a doll on a cardboard to have a paperdoll because mama wont spend a penny on a barbie doll. She would rather spend the money on something useful in the house.

Whenever I ask her for money, she always have something to trade. Either she will make me do some household chores to earn it, or she will literally let me go with her to her job and help her. There were even times when I and my siblings scavenge recyclables from garbages to earn money.

Back then I never understood her. I even see her as a great manipulator and dictator. But now that i became a mother like her, i realized that she was just preparing us to be ready in facing the realities of life. So I thank my mother for not spoiling me back then. Life is still hard but since i already experienced it as a child, it was just a piece of cake now.