International Women’s Day 2017
Today on International Women’s Day, we celebrate women of all ages, race and religion throughout history.
My mum Adebi is my hero, my role model who I have chosen to celebrate on this special day. She’s the kind of woman I can only hope to be even a tiny bit like. I wanted to draw something to mark today and what mum means to me, so I asked her for a pencil that belonged to her or Dad that I could use.
As I sit and ponder these 2 special pencils, I think of my Mum’s story and how joyful with tinges of sadness her life has been. The red one was Dad’s – mum still kept it in his bedside table beside their bed – and she gifted it to me, knowing I love pencils and would treasure it in all its simplicity. I can still picture Dad sharpening these unusually shaped pencils with a knife when I was a kid, popping it behind his ear until he was ready to mark the timber he was about to cut for whatever project he was working on at the time. Such a hard worker, my Dad.
The yellow pencil is one Mum shuffled around the house searching for. She knew immediately where Dad’s pencil was as she had kept it safe all these years. But her pencil was randomly placed in another drawer, albeit very neatly, as everything is with my Mum. She is the ultimate minimalist, never wasting, never hoarding, appreciative of everything she owns. This one other pencil in the whole of her house, she was happy to give to me, as she knew it would bring me joy to draw with it and that’s what she lived for – giving others joy, especially her children.
Today I celebrate International Women’s Day, honouring my loving and industrious mum and the man who fell in love with her over 70 years ago.
In partnership together, my folks brought me up to honour myself as a woman and to see that anything is possible in life and to believe that I can follow my dreams!
I love this photo of their wedding day – mum riding on a donkey to the church, and dad over on the far left, his head popping out over the crowd…
Below is the drawing of an olive tree I created with my Mum and Dad’s pencils. My Dad’s pencil was wonderful for creating the strong, foundational lines of the olive tree and my Mum’s pencil brought depth and detail to it. Much like them in life – John the strong, loving foundation and Adebi the great, generous doer.
I chose the olive tree because of its great significance in my heritage – the olive tree being a symbol of the land of Lebanon, the place of my parents’ birth. I now understand why my childhood backyard is still full of olive trees, a reminder of their homeland and a symbol of a deep love that surpasses time and space.
Jennifer xo
