Anjum Niaz: Don't Wait for Motrher's Day -Go Hug Your Mom

My male readers may shrug off this column as an old-fashioned story. No, it isn’t. It’s about the new US president and the kind of home environment he got when growing up. Would you not want to stop and think what ingredients went into making this black — half and half — waif into the most powerful man in the world today? It was his white grandma, dear male readers. We tend to put grannies on the backburner. That’s where these sweet old things belong, we argue, and we move on to more sexy stuff.

Moms too, especially the ‘over-the-hill’ types, get the same treatment of being passé and therefore mummified for family archives. How short- sighted? The macho in Pakistani men never lets them acknowledge in public that whatever success they achieve in life is because of their mothers and the sacrifices they made. Why are Pakistani men so boorish about praising their mothers in public? Rarely have I heard any guy who has made it to the top, stand up and say ‘Thank You’ to his mother before a crowd. American men are a different. They get all teary-eyed, maudlin and touchy-feely when they say that it’s their moms who are responsible for putting them where they stand on life’s pedestal today. Bravo!

Don’t wait for Mother’s Day. Go hug your mom and grandma. They are your heroines. And by the way, it’s okay for men to cry. Go ahead and cry when your tears well up.