Bubbles
The lightness and weight in creating miracles; the day I realise mothers are no superheroes, but superhumans.
I am currently doing an online course called Arts as Healing and one of my latest assignments is to create a small painting for each significant relationship in my life, write a sentence expressing a key memory or insight related to that relationship and put the images together into a single, cohesive composition. I picked 2 of my earlier portraits of my sons to form part of my composition. The two paintings were made using my fingers to apply acrylic paint on the canvases, titled Bubble Boy 1, and Bubble Boy 2.
The titles of the paintings given were pretty literal - they were images of my kids blowing bubbles. But revisiting these two portraits now in the context of psychotherapy and expressive arts reminded me of two incidents that occurred shortly after Christmas last year and about 7 years ago.
7 years ago, my older one Timmy skied off-piste with his friend, flew over an old military building, landed so hard he broke both his heels. He was airlifted to the kids’ hospital in Luzern and had to stay there for a week before they operated on him and put 9 screws inside his feet. He was on a wheelchair for many weeks before he got casts made for his feet that needed to be change a few times before he underwent another operation after 6 months to remove the screws. He was only 10 years old.
Imagine my shock when I got a call from my husband on 29 December last year that my younger one who was 13 had a really bad ski accident and fell flat on his face on a ski run. Once again, it was a sunny day with no fresh snow for several days prior so the pistes were very icy and he went too fast and couldn’t break his fall. He was airlifted to the same hospital his brother was sent to. Since this was not my first rodeo, I packed a bag of clothes for him and I, expecting us to stay overnight because of his head injury. Thank God nothing was broken and he was sent back home with us.
I didn’t realise what a trigger it was for me to step into the same hospital 7 years later. The interior of the emergency and accidents waiting room was exactly the same. The same jaundiced yellow walls, the makeshift bed sections separated by more jaundiced yellow curtains that make me feel so claustrophobic I had to sit outside next to the toilet, starring down at the laminate floor that must have had held pools of blood, tears, vomit and pee of young patients and their families in its non porous skin - emotional waste that no industrial-strength bleach can burn off. The Nescafe coffee from the vending machine still tastes good though.
I always thought my mom was a superhero. She raised me and my brother up single-handedly and put us through university on her paltry accounts assistant salary. I was also a shitty, rebellious teenager.
I found out after becoming a mom myself, that mothers are not superheroes at all. In fact, I think the only super power we have is creating life inside our tummies. After the babies came out, I did not have any super power left to erase all those silver linings they call stretchmarks.
In fact, mothers are force to be super… human. We feel every human emotion alot more, so much more. I wished I could take away my kids’ discomfort when they get sick or hurt. I was so overjoyed and want to share videos of Timmy playing the electric guitar for us the very first time over Christmas like a proud groupie/momnager. I screamed the loudest seeing Nathan win a cross country race and told everyone that kids’ get their athleticism from their mothers. I wish I was the one wailing and rolling in pain on the hospital bed after 9 screws were removed from Timmy’s feet because the anaesthesia wore off too fast, and he woke up too soon and tore his stitches.
And I felt so heavy hearted and cried myself to sleep the first few nights of 2026 after reading about the many young people who perished in the nightclub fire in Crans Montana.
Talking about my bubble boy paintings to my lecturer and course-mates online, I felt this visceral sensation of bittersweetness. I could taste it in my saliva. It smelled abit stale and lukewarm too, like air trapped in a 1-day old balloon suddenly released and you can smell your own bad breath mixed with stretched rubber.
My first son gave me my precious identity as a mom, and my second one, who is free spirited and have a mind of his own, taught me to see the world through childlike, carefree eyes. He has the most expressive and joyful eyes as a toddler.
I wish I can keep them safe, secure and grounded in a little cosy bubble as long as I can. Especially now that they are in their teens. And adulting is even harder.
But I guess bubbles are meant to float, to fly. If they touch the ground, they would burst. But it is ok too to pop, that fragile ephemeral beauty means we treasure the magical joy that bubbles gives us even more.