A Gilded Family Tree

Awailing child calls to their mother, tears clouding their eyes and beckons her towards them for relief. The mother runs to her child, searching for their source of pain. Did they scrape their knee? Did they cut their hand? Did they hit their head?

“Mama,” the child whispers through sniffles, “I broke the plate.”

The mother looks off to the side where her late mother’s navy lined, gilded floral plate lays shattered on the hardwood floor. The polished lines of the intricately gilded petals have become indistinguishable. She kept very few belongings of her own mother, and she frequently told her children to be careful while handling them. Holding in tears, she looks back to her child and raises her hand to their face. She cradles their cheek, wiping away the warm tears with her thumb.

“Are you hurt?” she asks despite her great pain. She misses her mother who taught her to remain patient in moments such as these.

“No,” her child says, “I’m sorry, Mama.”

She smiles and gently hugs her child. “It’s okay, habibi Let’s try to be careful next time. Don’t go over there until I clean it up.”

Her child, though young, will continue to remember their mother’s kindness and patience with every hardship and growing pain. They will grow and embody that kindness in moments when their own mother is weak and unwell. They will remember to be patient with her as she slowly forgoes this life, leaving her children to outlive her, grieve her, and remember her.

We often part this world just as we entered it—weak, feeble, and in need of assistance.

A child is pure, with a clean heart and a clean mind. Their skin, as smooth as talc or a kitten’s fur, with eyes filled with love and wonder. Children are our legacy. They outlive us. They remember us. They tell our stories. There is no greater joy than when a child jumps on top of us forcing a grunt to escape our mouths. They climb to put their heads on our shoulders, draping their arms around us. Cheek to cheek, their skin is soft—delicate almost. They grow quickly and form complex emotions, understand adult wit, and crack jokes of their own. There is no greater beauty than watching their hair grow in length, or their height becoming just short of ours.

Children are malleable, reliant on their caregivers, seeking relief from hunger, thirst, and pain. Being the beautiful treasures that they are,

“Wealth and children are an adornment of this worldly life” (18:46).

It is an Islamic obligation to fulfill the role of a kind and merciful caregiver that grants their children equal opportunities and endless love, to the best of their abilities. A mother and father must love their children unconditionally, and teach them to love God and His servants. Imam Sadiq in Tuhaf al-’Uqul once said, “Three rights for the child are incumbent upon his father: selecting a good mother for him, giving him a good name, and exerting the utmost effort in raising him well.” Acquiring greatness begins with the love and care we receive from our parents, and through that, their character imprinting on ours is how we remain remembered to the souls we meet in our lifetimes. No one wishes to remember those who hurt us, but the stories of mercy and kindness are repeated long past our death dates.

The reality is, many of us might not grow to see our faces on billboards or our names etched into newspapers. Many of us might not receive a Nobel Prize or have an extensive list of accomplishments on our screens when we Google our names. This doesn’t make us any less than those that do, and Allah SWT will not decrease our rank simply because our names aren’t written in history books or known by the masses. We are known to Allah SWT, and we are known to our children. Our greatest legacy is that which is connected to our greatest responsibility—molding and caring for our children.

In a hundred years, many of us will probably be forgotten— perhaps discovered at some point when our great great grandchildren delve into the family tree for a school project, coming across our branch. In relation to the vast universe, we seem insignificant by name. This might feel uncomfortable to many, but not to me. I find comfort in knowing that I am one of many. We are merely specks in a world that has seen millions of lives past, present, and future. We are simply one timeline in what appears to be a billion. I may not be remembered a hundred years into the future, but my behaviour, my akhlaq (character), my impact on this world will cause ripples in the universe, surviving centuries into the future.

Today I might help an elderly lady find her way around the subway and tomorrow, a bystander might do the same.

Maybe I extend some kind words to someone on the street who is struggling internally, and tomorrow they find the courage to continue living. Imagine doing these acts of good in front of children—autonomous creatures that absorb everything and anything they see or hear. Sharing kind words, giving charity, or reading the Quran will all be ingrained in the minds of our children, to whom we are the most valuable sources of knowledge. How often do we see young children put on the hijab and follow their mother’s movements of prayer out of pure curiosity? How often do we see children sharing their toys or food because they saw their father sharing with their mother? Our kindness is not limited by the extraordinary accomplishments we have in our lifetime, but the habitual acts of good we engage in every single day.

As such, parents have an Islamic duty to be kind and merciful towards their children. Once narrated in Sahih Muslim, a companion of Prophet Muhammad SAW saw the Prophet kiss his children. The companion says, “I have ten children and have never kissed any of them.” Our Prophet SAW responded,

“God will not have mercy on a person who does not have mercy on others”

(Sahih Muslim 2318a).

We are the legacy of our grandparents, and our grandchildren will be our legacy too. Family trees are ribbons stretching across the existence of human life within this universe, while kindness and imaan are at the core of worship. I hope and pray that the ribbon of my lineage continues to extend beyond my existence and that it remains beautiful, unharmed, and sustained by the love and kindness that parents give to their children to inevitably create a cycle of tolerance and patience. As Muslims, we have a duty to exhibit the character of our Prophet Muhammad SAW, embodying the manner in which he showed his children love and mercy, who in turn, showed the same compassion for theirs. Every day we should choose to demonstrate such everlasting kindness, as modeled by the great leaders of Islam, in the hopes that our children’s kindness will one day become a testament of the love we’ve shown others.