I will forever be a momma’s girl.
Back in preschool, our teacher wanted to fill the classroom walls, so she handed out these massive posters with questions about ourselves — our birthdays, favorite colors, favorite animals. For the ones about best friends and role models, I didn’t have to think twice.
Every answer was the same: my mom.
I’ve written Voices pieces about every member of my family, everyone except her. Now that college is ending, it feels like the right time. Truthfully, I’ve always been afraid to write about her. In more ways than one, the words have to be perfect: strong enough to carry the heaviness and depth of our relationship, honest enough to hold the years it took to mend it.
My mom came to this country in her early teens, and I grew up hearing the stories she told about those years — late nights at Denny’s with her friends, the way they’d sit in those booths for hours, long after they’d finished eating, just to feel like they belonged somewhere.
I always wonder: Would we have been friends? Would I have stood up to the boys who made fun of her struggles with math, the teachers who never bothered to learn her name?
It’s strange to think about your parent as a teenager, vulnerable and alone. Trying to figure out who she was in a place that didn’t make it easy.
We grew up together.
And like most people growing up, we fought. Vehemently. We yelled until our voices cracked, cried until we were exhausted, trying to make sense of each other through the static. I think we were both scared of being misunderstood, losing each other, not being enough.
Still, we kept trying. I taught her how teenagers talk about boys, how to shop for makeup, how to tell the difference between a text that means something and one that doesn’t.
When thinking about those moments, I feel warm. I remember her sitting cross-legged on my bed while I swiped concealer onto the back of her hand, explaining the difference between matte and dewy like it mattered. And maybe it did. Maybe it was our way of learning each other again, not as mother and child, but as women. It took years to get here. When she asks for my opinion on lip liners or new blouses for work, it isn't just about clothes. It is a kind of trust, a kind of closeness we hadn’t always had.
In exchange, she taught me how to take care of myself, how to hold my own, how to move through the world quietly but never invisibly. I will never forget her words reminding me to be independent, strong, all in between.
And still, there’s a part of me that wishes she hadn’t had to be those things so soon. That she could’ve had a childhood like mine, one that left room for softness, for silliness, for mistakes that didn’t carry weight. I try to picture her as the kind of teenage girl who could be frivolous, who laughed too loud, who wasted time without guilt. Maybe she got a glimpse of that in those late nights at Denny’s — sticky booths and cold fries and shakes, borrowed time. But even then, I wonder if she ever felt fully at ease, or if some part of her was already learning how to survive. I dream of what she would have been like if she hadn’t had to grow up the second she landed here.
I wish she had the chance to make mistakes, to be unsure, to move through the world without the weight of survival. And even if that version of her meant I wouldn’t exist, I think I’d still choose it. She deserved that kind of lightness, that freedom to just be. I carry that with me always — the quiet understanding that much of what I get to experience now is what she had to give up.
So I try to live in a way that honors those sacrifices, that holds space for the dreams she set aside. In many ways, I am living not just for myself, but for both of us.
Niru Mendpara is the embodiment of love, beauty, strength, service and quiet endurance, the kind that doesn’t ask to be noticed, but shapes everything around it. For years, I looked at her and only saw the parts of her that were firm and immovable. But now, I also see the softness she tucked away, the sacrifices she never named, the tenderness she gave even when she had none left for herself.
Writing this doesn’t make it all easier to explain. Our relationship has never fit neatly into words; it’s been too layered, too tangled, too real. But I will always be who I am because of her. And more than anything, I hope that in this life, my mother feels as deeply loved and cared for as she’s always made me feel.
This one’s for her. She’s the first best friend I ever had and the one I’ll always come back to.
Aashi Mendpara is a senior from Orlando, Fla. majoring in Neuroscience and Medicine, Science and the Humanities. Her column shares reflections on her childhood, growing relationships, getting older and navigating life’s changes.
