Belén Yudess ’25
Copy Editor
When I was younger, I don’t think I saw my mom as a person. She was an omniscient presence, an ineffable being with a talent for making chilaquiles with an extra dash of love. She was a summer storm, an evening breeze, a warm sugar cookie fresh out of the oven, but never a person. She was always there, always knew the right thing to do, always a mother.
Growing up, I had a one-dimensional view of motherhood and what it entails. I’m not very good at math, but an equation that always seemed very straightforward in my head was motherhood equals unconditional love. Plain and simple with no need to double-check the answer because, like every indisputable solution, there was proof that backed up the work.
In the summer of 2023, I watched my mom courageously and compassionately show up for my dad as he prepared to have cancer surgery. Although she was afraid, she consistently walked into our house with the open arms and resilience needed to hold up our entire family. She meticulously prepared every room, comforted my dad as he processed the situation, and worked to ensure lesson plans for hundreds of students, all while succeeding in her role as a mother. Even though she wore several hats: caretaker, educator, nurse, wife, sibling, daughter, she was always a mom.
For a long time, I didn’t see my mom as a person. I believed that her role as my mom was a binding contract, that everything she did as my mom was something she had to do as my mom. I was wrong. Every day, my mom chooses to show up for me.
She chooses to love me unabridged and unapologetically. She chooses to stick around and support me in every way she can. She chooses to rub Vix on my runny nose when I’m sick. She chooses to drive three hours on her day off to take me to breakfast. She chooses to encourage my passion for literature, she chooses to pay for my education, two loves I learned from her. She chooses to lecture me about wearing socks and not going to bed with wet hair, she chooses to care about my health and well-being.
She chooses to listen to my dad and me about our problems and chooses to hold our hands through it all. She chooses to be there for her parents night and day, she chooses to bring her siblings together when she can. She chooses to make me laugh when I’m in a bad mood, and chooses to let me pick the show we’ll watch because she knows it will make me smile. She chooses my dad and I every day, not just because she is a wife and mother, but because she is a person capable of immense love and acceptance.
I think that my mom believes that by crying in front of me, she is portraying weakness, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Every day I watch as she battles her body without complaint, a war that she must physically fight alone day in and day out. She takes on all our burdens and asks for nothing in return. She deserves to cry and to be able to turn to us for the same endless support she gives to us. It is a sign of her humanity, which does not make her weak, but stronger than anyone I will ever know. She will always be the sun, more brilliant than anything around her, and even the sun has rainy days, and it’s those rainy days that allow for growth.
As I prepare to graduate, I admire and see my mom more than ever before. Our conversations have matured from endless rants about my disdain for high-school geometry to discussions about our mutual concerns and joys as we both prepare to enter new chapters of our lives and as I seek her advice on how to navigate my first love. Every time I am paralyzed by a crippling fear of this massive, magnificent abyss of the future, I am mobilized and inspired by my mom’s story.
Her tenacity as she put a hold on her career plans to support my grandmother’s business during the L.A. Riots. The way her eyes light up whenever she talks about her first couple of years teaching kindergarten; a position she never imagined herself in and that led her to meeting my dad. Her intense knowledge and passion for multilingual education and her belief that this was indeed the path meant for her. Her unwavering belief that life is not linear, therefore, it is okay to take chances and lean into the uncertainty. The first lesson of motherhood.
Although I am unsure what life after May 17 will hold, I know I am in total control of at least one choice: to continue to choose to love and see my mom in her unimaginably beautiful humanness. And I know at least one thing, no matter where I am in life, my proudest accomplishment will always be being her daughter.
