TikTok, Sylvia Plath, and Mother’s Day? Let’s talk about it. Girls on TikTok have gotten their hands on The Bell Jar and turned Plath’s fig tree metaphor into an online “don’t let your figs rot” movement. In the classic, a woman’s life ambitions and multitude are compared to a fig tree, with each fruit symbolising an alternate life she could’ve led. While some takes centre the paralysis of making that choice, ours looks to the woman who dedicated her life to the sweet fruit she picked day in and day out – you.
While you may be living out your 20’s, making sure you make it to law school, and get to see Paris in the Spring, your mum might not have been as lucky. She didn’t put things off, fearful of picking the wrong fig off her tree.
This Mother’s Day, we are paying homage to the figs lost in pursuit of motherhood being above all else, because your mums and ours have always just been little girls wanting to do everything and be everyone all at once. An ambition so tender, it still carries the taste of adolescence to this day. We hear it in their stories. We see it in their sacrifice. We feel it in their affection, as boundless as the ocean.
As I write this, I can’t help but think of the fig tree outside my mother’s childhood home that my uncle would harvest whenever they were in season. I think of choices that were circumstantially made for her. I think of how I see her in others. And I think of all the grief laying their figs to rest must have carried.
“Em el Banet,” Amal Ismaiel has made peace with that. Raising a powerhouse of women all on her own, the mom based in Dubai understands the value of nurturing that ambition in her own daughters. “I cared that my daughters weren’t dependent on anybody. That they wouldn’t yield to anybody. I’d always tell my girls, I’ve lived, seen, experienced – each of you needs to express herself in her own way, her own character, almost her own brand.”
It was to be expected; Ismaiel was no stranger to big dreams herself. “Having greater passion post-grad, I knew I didn’t want to work for anybody, so I opened my own advertising business at 19. That went on for a while until the Gulf War happened, and then the world stopped,” she says.
After relocating to the UAE and building a family of her own, the Egyptian mum of five was faced with decisions that left her circling back to point zero. “This is the life I chose. I chose to be a successful businesswoman and a good mum, and I had to give up on a partnership. Since he chose to go live his life, I chose my daughters’ lives.”
For the hour or so that we spoke to Dubai-based Salwa Merhi, we understood what that kind of commitment meant. “I would leave my 40-day-old daughter at my neighbour’s since my parents lived far and the commute just wasn’t doable with my pharmacy shifts. I’d cry a lot early on,” the Lebanese-Palestinian mum says.
“As much as she was a friend who stood by me, it wasn’t the same as my mum or my sister looking after a piece of me. Even if I were to leave my kid at my mum’s, at what point do I become one?” she poses.
Having now moved back to the Philippines, Donabel Aquino gets it. She also had to make seemingly impossible choices at one point. “I sacrificed a lot. I had to leave my children back home and work in another country to give them what they need, even though it was incredibly hard for me,” she tells Cosmo.
“All I wanted was to take care of my kids. I wouldn’t have left for another country miles away otherwise. It was hard for me not to be there by their side,” Aquino recalls.
Merhi knows just how much that guilt eats at you. “Didn’t God bless me with this child? I ought to give back to him by being affectionate, nurturing – do you deprive yourself of seeing him waddle? Hearing his first words? Being there for his first day at school?”
“I felt like the circumstances forced my hand to make do. Had things been better off, I would’ve at least worked hours that fit my schedule. We’re talking 20 or so years ago; accommodations like WFH or home-run businesses weren’t available to us yet,” she says.
“Of course, motherhood is a sacrifice in all cases, whether it’s nice or rears its uglier head sometimes. From the moment she carries a child, a mother has this unrelenting responsibility to do right by them,” Ismaiel adds, “But I’m satisfied with the cards I’ve been dealt. My message lives on through my girls.”
“It’s not only an ambition of mine, but it’s also a challenge. Inshallah, they’d tell me they wanna go study on Mars – I’ll take them there. “Ya mama,” they’d object. It’s none of your business how; I’ll figure it out,” she relays conversations had amidst uncertainty.
“A lot of memories stuck with me, honestly. Some were happy, and others left me upset, especially the time I left my family. I didn’t even see them for over a year, but all my hard work paid off when I saw my daughter graduate as an engineer,” Aquino shares.
In a moment of reflection that tugs at the heartstrings, she says, “If I were to speak to my younger self now, I would thank her for all the sacrifices she made for us to have a better life as a family.”
“It felt like, even though I didn’t get to wear my grad gown, God made it up for me through my son. I still remember crying like an open faucet when I saw him graduate from kindergarten. Oh, I was just ecstatic. It felt like I was graduating,” Mama Merhi recalls.
“God blessed me with the fact my kids were diligent, so I’d feel like I was in pursuit of excellence with them. It was rewarding for me. Whenever I’d see them succeed, I was bearing the fruit of all the effort I poured into them,” she goes on.
Their lost figs? “A year after getting married, we had decided on a big move to the US, then 9/11 happened. I already had my passport stamped, but immigration had halted everything,” Merhi tells Cosmo.
As for Maganda Aquino, she says, “When I was younger, I wanted to become a nurse, because I would’ve liked helping people who are ill, but it didn’t happen because finances got in the way.”
“Whether she’s a fig tree or an olive branch or a palm tree bearing dates, a woman’s fruit is only as sweet as the water she nourishes it with,” Mama Ismaiel reflects.
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