Update : November 15, 2022

• In the US, second Sunday of May is celebrated as Mother’s Day.
• For multi-generational families, it would also be Grandmother’s Day and Great Grandmother’s Day as well.
• Some countries and cultures celebrate “Mother’s Day” on a different day.
  In Myanmar, it is celebrated on the Full Moon Day of Pyatho.
  
• The first words that most people learn in their lives include the following and their variants.
  Mum, Mummy, Mom, Mommy, Mah Mah, May May, …

• We extend the term Mother to our schools (e.g. Alma Mater)
  and our country (e.g. Motherland).
• In idiomatic usage, Mother is “the hand that rocked the cradle”.
• Mother’s unbounded love is honored in many real-life stories (e.g. “Toe Aye” ship wreck).

• The following song has been recorded by many artists.
• I have reprinted a sample verse.
  The verses may have variations.

M-O-T-H-E-R (Famous song)

M is for the Mercy she possesses
(Variant: Million things she gave me)

O means Only that she’s growing Old
(Variant : that I Owe her all I owe)

T is for her Tender sweet caresses
(Variant : for the Tears she shed to save me)

H is for her Heart of purest gold
(Variant: her Hand that touch and hold)

E means Everything she’s done to save me

R means Right and Right she’ll always be

Put them all together

They spell MOTHER

A word that means a world to me

​My Mother

I would like to acknowledge my beloved mother. When we were young, she would wake up before her housemaids at 4 a.m. to prepare breakfast for us. She supervised our homework when we were in primary and middle school. She bought us cameras (e.g. Yashica and Kodak), bicycles (e.g. Rayleigh and Hercules), scooter (e.g. Silver Pigeon), cars (e.g. Datsun and Dodge Jeep), two typewriters (e.g. Remington for English, Olympia for Burmese), musical instruments (e.g. guitar, harmonica), comics (e.g. Beano, Dandy, Topper, Beezer), Classics Illustrated and Junior Classics Illustrated, “How and Why” series, “Myanmar Swel Sone Kyan” (Burmese Encyclopedia), Reader’s Digest and other periodicals, to name a few.

Although my parents were devout Buddhists, they sent their children to SPHS (St. Pauls’s High School) and SJC (St. John’s Convent) — run by the Roman Catholic missionaries — to get a good education.

The seeds that were sown by my beloved parents have bloomed allowing me to pay back to my alma mater and my community.

I have served as

• Organizer, SPZP-2000
• Chief Editor of “RIT Alumni International Newsletter”
  and Editor of several other newsletters (BAPS Newsletter, Dhammananda Newsletter)
• Contributor to the Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklife and Folklore (published by ABC CLIO)
• Burmese Language expert for a course developed by the National Foreign Language Center,
  University of Maryland (College Park)
• Docent at Computer History Museum
• Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) at Toastmasters International
• Translator/interpreter at meditation retreats (e.g. at Tathagata Mediatation Center)
• Editor of books and magazines
  Homage to Sayadaw U Silanandabhivamsa
  Collection of dhamma talks by Sayadaw U Silananda
  Three books by Sayadaw U Jotalankara
  90th Anniversary Issue of RUBC.YUBC)
  Bawa and Dhamma
  Cetana Thi Thar Kan

Without my mother’s exhortation “Eyes have you and you see not, Ears have you and you hear not, …”, and “Any thing that’s worth doing is worth doing well”, I would not be here today.

Thanks, mom.