She pours blessed water as she cooks spaghetti,
Has a drawer full of relics as tiny as pieces of confetti,
She has a direct channel when talking to the divine,
Her relationship to the saints is so hard to define.

She says she is old,
Just to be told she is not,
And even when it is hot,
Her feet are always cold.

Practicing self-abnegation,
She never asks for anything directly,
Believing in differed gratification,
All she does is hint at it nonchalantly.

“If you’re pouring Pepsi, bring me a small cup,
If there’s only enough for you, I will settle for Seven up,”
After asking twice “Are you sure you don’t want this cake?”
Only then, does she think it might be hers to take.

One learns to read through her signals,
One learns to cohabitate with her rituals,
Things can only be done in a particular way,
And that’s how things should forever stay.

She’s a little obsessive by nature,
Sticks to what worked, to avoid failure,
At heart all she does is just to mean well,
But from her actions, sometimes it is hard to tell.

When asked her counsel about a path that’s not understood,
“Illi fi kheir, Allah y’admo” - may God present what’s inherently good,
This is all what she intelligibly says before starting to murmur the rosary,
If we are lost, she is sure we’ll be guided by her friend mother Mary.

She always managed to be elegant,
Even when we were not affluent,
A colorful scarf, to enliven a simple dress,
With no budget, she always managed to impress.

Knowledgeable about matters of the protocol,
She is consulted by one and all,
“Here’s to bride! Here’s to the groom!”
She would raise her glass, imitated by all the room.

She quit smoking some years back,
And never developed a hump on the back,
She now takes a Calcium tablet every day,
As well as some other drugs wrapped in a bouquet.

It is through food that she manifests her cares,
Even at seventy she still likes to do the windows,
“I have to do some sport” she seriously declares,
As the space between the eyebrows narrows.

She never learned to knit or did crochet,
But she knows how to bake the best soufflé,
If I travel and I call, the first question she manages to ask,
“Are you eating well?” for eating is the most important task.

It took me years to learn how to accept her as she is,
As things with her always seemed like answering a quiz,
I know I am biased, as it is my mother I am talking about,
But she’s very good at being my mother, I eventually found out