Fairmont Toastmasters Club

[Yasmeen Youseef]

Yasmeen Youseef:
Ice Breaker Speech "'Having a mom and being one...A life time of options and choices" (Mar 24, 2005)

Introduction:

"I joined Fairmont Corporate office in July 2001 as an Accounting coordinator, one year after coming to Canada for the first time. My life has been cantered around my kids ever since I had my first child. I hold a bachelor degree in Teaching English as a second language and A Professional Diploma in Teaching Methodology- both from Egypt. Like many of the people in this room, I'm coming from a different background. Living and working in Canada for five years now has been a great experience to me in which my mind got to shake hands with as many cultures as I never dreamed to come across. Living in Canada to me is like eating a big bowl of healthy SALAD. It's consisted of so many different pieces, each has its own taste and nutritious value. All so colourful and delicious"

Speech Script:

My dad used to be a police officer who used to move a lot and work in different cities. When I, my older brother and sister were little, we used to travel with him wherever he went. But when we started going to school and needed stability, we stayed and he continued to do all the traveling on his own. My mom was a medical analyst who owned a medical lab that required a very hard work to maintain. With my dad away most of the time and doing both parents responsibilities, my mom decided that I and my siblings needed discipline more than love. I believe she thought if she was too loving, she wouldn’t be able to be a source of authority to us. Things had to get done right the first time. No mistakes were allowed. Whenever she had some time to spend with us, top priority was given to highlighting the things she didn’t like about us, things we needed to change. Her idea about love was to keep a neat house and cook healthy meals and work too hard so that we can get all what we ask for. She chose to pick that concept of love. She wanted us to be ‘good’ meaning, ‘don’t argue’ just be good. And I chose to be a ‘good’ kid who always listened and said ‘ok mom’. As I was growing older, I always wondered about the type of mom I would be!

Whenever my dad came home, he knew that his time with us was compendious. So, he didn’t wish to be tough with us. He would rather spend his time telling us stories, taking us places and talking to us. And although he did little for us, ( at least much less than what my mom did), I tended to wait for his returns impatiently and feel more comfortable and safer with him.

That was our routine for a long time. I always wanted to get closer to my dad and even my mom, but then growing up, getting married and later immigrating to Canada…never gave me enough time to do so. My mom died in October 2003 in Egypt. I was here. So, I will never have a second chance to work on our relationship. It is always going to be an unfinished business. An unwrapped up relationship. And now and suddenly I’m a mother to two bundles of joy.

While my husband is completely caught up in his dreams to be a multimillionaire business man, I get to experience the real value of life with them. I allow myself to be both amazed and amused with the things they do and say. I allow myself a second chance to learn things the right way from the start with them. When I am around my kids, I choose not to wear make up nor fancy cloths. I am aware of the fact that I spend about 10 hours away from them at work. That leaves me with compendious time to spend with them. I choose not to spend that time trying to keep my cloths clean or look good. I want them to be allover me. I want to be able to give them lots of hugs and kisses all the time. We sing, we dance we roll on the floor, we race and tell stories. We are loud and all over the place. I understand the importance of keeping a neat house and cooking healthy meals, but I can’t see why we can not go for some junk food from time to time in order to spend some quality time with my kids having fun and getting closer instead of spending the time in the kitchen and giving them a hard time to get them to eat their vegetables.

When I was expecting my first child, people used to tell me about all the sleepless nights I was going to get, all the running around and physical effort. But no one prepared me to how good this was going to be. How rewarding and amusing! My kids leave me speechless a lot. I remember when my mom died, I tried to introduce the idea of death to my daughter Maryam by telling her that it is like sleeping for a long long time. She said nothing. But A long time later, we were watching the sleeping beauty movie. And incase you don’t know the story it’s when beautiful princess Aurura was put to sleep for a long long time and was never to wake up unless she receives a true love’s kiss. So we were watching and the true love arrived and gave Aurura her kiss and she woke up. My daughter turned to me and said, ‘ mom, if someone gave your mom got a true love’s kiss, will she wake up again?’ And I was speechless.

My daughter has chosen to be the kind of daughter I couldn’t be. She chooses to let me know all the time about the kind of mom she needs. And I chose to listen to her. Because she speaks with her tiny heart. Her heart thinks and her mind feels. I remember once that I yelled at her because she did something she wasn’t supposed to do and she hurt herself. Amongst her tears, she looked at me and said “you didn’t have to yell. You could have asked me not to do that again and I would have stopped’! She surprised me; because she reminded me of the options I had and how I chose the ugly one! And she was right.

I started to think about my mom and understand the way she did things, not necessarily accept her ways. But rather I started to think about the things I could have chosen to do and which could have affected her reactions and changed our relationship to the better. Just as my daughter is doing now. What I really think about all the time, is about my options and choices and about the options and choices I give others.