An essay that makes a mom cries – with tears of joy!

( This post was first written around 2015 when our daughter Hannah was in seventh grade.)

Our daughter Hannah is in seventh grade now but has been taking accelerated English classes. Part of the required course work is having have to write a weekly journal for 2 pages. She has been wonderfully flourishing in this challenging environment.  I have been reviewing her essays weekly and it has been a joy to read those.  Sometimes I come to realize that she is more mature than I have given her the credit, based on her expression and the trail of thoughts in her essays.  But this particular one struck Aye’s heart. One day she asked about the houses we lived in Burma as she had to write something about a home that one’s parents or grandparents used to live at. I told her that my parents never owned a house as we were government civil servants and used to live in government subsidized apartments.

 Fortunately, Aye’s parents owned a home in Magway for decades and nowadays one of Aye’s sisters and family live there. Hannah has been there  twice and has some memories of her visits. With that and Aye filling in the rest, she came up with the following journal entry. That made Aye nostalgic, reminded her of the childhood and the deceased parents who lived in that house till they passed away. Aye’s mom and dad built that house in the early years of their marriage and Aye grew up in that house her whole life till she went away for medical school. Tears welled up in Aye’s eyes and Hannah got worried.  Aye had to reassure her that those were the tears of joy, a parent’s joy from her child’s scholastic accomplishment. I hope, we have provided our daughter a similar environment so that she can always look back to the place she grew up, a home! 

HOME:

In the winter of 2012, my family and I travelled to Myanmar (Burma). Both my parents were born and raised there. The picture shows my late grandmother’s house when we visited her in the city of Magway where my mom grew up. Looking back, the visit was extremely sentimental, being it the last time my mom seeing her mom at her childhood home. Grandma had passed away since. The house was never extravagant and fancy since my mom’s family was not that well to do financially but it will always be strong enough to hold the memories made inside of it. When asked what was her best memory associated with the house, my mom gave a simple clear answer. She told me that there used to be an unfinished part of the house upstairs that acted like a balcony and in the summers my mom would sleep there under the stars with her sisters. The sky would be clear, with the moon shining brightly, while the light of a thousand stars would sparkle above.  That part of the house has since been given walls and a roof for extra living space, but my mom still remembers the warm summer nights spent gazing at the sky. The rest of the house is as simple as the balcony was. There is a “living room” with cement floors and a couch. There is a plain bedroom where my grandma used to sleep in. On the upper floor, there is an attic like room with three beds that my mom and aunts used to sleep in. However my favorite area in the whole house is the kitchen. If you wanted to know what was for dinner, you would step in the kitchen where an aroma of smells and tastes would invite you. During my stay, I would often watch my mom and relatives cook, feeling in awe of all the possible creations that could be made with a handful of people and ingredients. Our dinner table was always full of multiple dishes.

During our stay in Magway, my family and I did not stay at the amazing house shown in the picture. However, we went there every day, each of those days cherished forever. To a normal looker, that house is just a house. But to me, that house is much more. It is the place my mom grew up in and left to seek a new adventure in America. It is the place she comes back to with her family to see her rest of the family. It is the place that I instantly fell in love with at one glance. It is the place where my grandmother spent her last seconds in this life. It is not a house, it is a home.