Happy Mother’s Day

by Sanman Thapa | 5-10-2026

There is something strange about old photographs. At first, you see faces. Then, years later, you begin seeing burdens.

This picture was taken sometime around 1988. Five boys standing beside our mother in a field somewhere in rural Nepal. At the time, it probably felt like an ordinary afternoon. Someone had a camera. We lined up. My mother stood quietly at the end as mothers often did back then, never quite placing themselves at the center, even when everything revolved around them.

Looking at it now, all I can think about is how much weight she must have been carrying.

My mother raised six boys. Seven, really, if you count my father, lol.

There was always work waiting for her. Cooking. Cleaning. Feeding animals. Working in the fields. Taking care of children who were always hungry, fighting, running around barefoot, getting sick, and needing something. Village life left little room for rest, especially for women. And somehow she carried all of it without complaint.

What I understand now, as an adult, is how lonely that must have felt sometimes.

There was no daughter beside her in the kitchen. No girl naturally drifts toward her world the way daughters often do in traditional homes. Just six boys filling the house with noise, mud, hunger, and chaos.

People used to joke that my parents kept having children because my father wanted a daughter. Maybe there is truth in that. He never had a sister either. My grandmother was surrounded by boys, too. Strange how certain patterns repeat themselves across generations without anyone planning them.

Somewhere in the middle of us all was another brother between Chandra and me. He died when he was nine months old. Nobody really talks about him anymore. In families like ours, grief was rarely spoken out loud. Life was too busy surviving. People carried on quietly and kept moving.

But he belonged to this family too.

As the older brother, I think I tried, in my own way, to stand closer to my mother’s side. I helped in the kitchen. Looked after my brothers. Fed animals. Worked in the fields. Maybe I sensed her exhaustion long before I understood it.

But still, I was not a daughter.

That sentence feels heavy to write because it says something larger about the lives women carried in that generation. They were expected to hold families together without asking for recognition. Their love appeared through labor more than words. They woke before everyone else and slept after everyone else. Their sacrifices became so normal that nobody thought to call them sacrifices.

Looking at this photograph now, I do not just see my childhood. I see the foundation of who I became. The responsibility. The guilt. The instinct to protect others. The understanding that love is often quiet, exhausting, and unseen.

Happy Mother’s Day to the woman who carried all of us.

And to the mothers whose stories were never fully told.