Water

I have never seen my mother flustered. Never seen her anything other than calm. Always kept her cool.

Even when we arrived at the last minute to a competition, she would take a deep breath and center herself.  For a minute, everything stopped, then began spinning crazy fast like it does in movies. She would multi-task all the time. Cooking, while talking on the phone to her friend who was going through a crisis, serving hot food to my father who was telling her about his day, correcting my mistakes in my homework and watching the television for snatches of her favorite mystery series. She would do all this in a smooth motion.

I have never seen her say one hot word. Her words were always measured. Her tone was lilting and even she was reproachful of the mess I had made trying to make a Sandwich, she was cleaning up the mess as she told me how I had used too much of Salt in it. She was right.

Relatives were never a problem. She maneuvered through them with ease. Never the one to shirk responsibility, she never gave up on even the ones who did not understand her. She was giving and she knew she could make do with the least that was offered to her. Where there were stones, she flowed over them like a river does over pebbles and smoothened things over.

I have never seen her anything but calm. Even when the disease ravaged her body, she was centered. And when the doctors told her she beat the disease, she offered a smile that said she knew it all along. And even in the cacophony of the monitors that are hooked to her pulse and heart, in the low light of the hospital, she asks me if all of us have eaten. Her husband, her grandchildren, her son-in-law and me. I tell her we have,

And goes to sleep, with that slight smile knowing her world is good, full and well.